Gold Rush Brides
(专辑: Our Time In Eden - 1992)
Follow the
typical signs, the
hand-painted lines, down prairie roads. Pass the
lone church spire. Pass the
talking wire from where to who knows? There's no way to divide the
beauty of the
sky from the
wild western plains. Where a
man could drift, in legendary myth, by roaming over spaces. The
land was free and the
price was right. Dakota on the
wall is a
white-robed woman, broad yet maidenly. Such power in her hand as she hails the
wagon man's family. I
see Indians that crawl through this mural that recalls our history. Who were the
homestead wives? Who were the
gold rush brides? Does anybody know? Do their works survive their yellow fever lives in the
pages they wrote? The
land was free, yet it cost their lives. In miner's lust for gold. A
family's house was bought and sold, piece by piece. A
widow staked her claim on a
dollar and his name, so painfully. In letters mailed back home her Eastern sisters they would moan as they would read accounts of madness, childbirth, loneliness and grief.