THE YUKON: 1913

My grandfather Theodore G. Felsberg, Sr. was a                                                                              
prospector in Alaska and the Yukon, around                                                                                    
the turn of the 19^th century. 

I was only fifteen, like you, then.
Now, I squat over a pitiful fire on top
twenty feet of frozen peat. 
Clasp cold and frost-bit hands.  
think about home, wonder 
what to make of my own lies. 
You want advice, lad?

I left New Jersey years ago lusting 
after rumor of gold. One should forgive 
a young man taking that bait, with full strength
and long years still before him.
The first time we found grains of gold
in the sheet steel pan, I saw my life 
unfold as I’d planned it.
Going home a rich man, respected.

So threw myself into the prospector’s lot, 
traveled long trails by dogsled and foot 
built cabins, tended endless fires 
to melt the peat, dug all winter, 
winched dirt up in buckets.
Always testing the pan, hoping 
to find the vein.

In these twenty years there’ve been
many rock-hard lessons about men
and cold but no gold. None panned out.
I crouch here, oddly familiar 
with the rank sweat of fear, the bitter 
taste of lost dreams and lost mates─
all drowned in drifts of riches. 

Don’t be snared by their stories, lad. 
Like a leg hold trap, they clamp tight.
An animal will gnaw off a leg to get free.

Jean Anne Feldeisen is a 75 year old grandmother and psychotherapist living on a farm in Maine. She had her first poem published at age 72 in Spank the Carp and more published in The Hopper, The Raven’s Perch, Neologism, Thimble Literary Magazine, Rising Phoenix Review and others. Her first chapbook, Not All Are Weeping, was published by Main Street Rag in May 2023.