Bye God. We’re going to Bodie.

They shed Bodie like snakes do skin,
slipped from it restless…tight
to peel themselves to new…
drained themselves downhill
from hell blister, frost bite
snow blind, tapped out veins.

Story goes…before she’d
come to purgatory, some kid
wrote in her diary…
Bye God. We’re going to Bodie.
Perhaps dad talk…of easy digging gold.
By God! We’re going to Bodie!
became her mom talk…of easy giving women,
whiskey, brawling, thieving, lying
freeze to death first…no place for a girl.
By God, we’re going to Bodie?
Mom was mostly right.

I’ve seen ghost towns…
their decay arrested states,
for by god, they appear daily
on the evening news.

 

Bonnie Marshall

Photographer: Phil Douglis

Startlements

Artist: Jules Bastien-Lepage, 1879

Some change is gradual
like mold spores
that bloom to smear unnoticed
in opaque blotches
upon the glass
behind drawn window shades.

Some change is startlement
like a tectonic shift.
We were that…now we’re this.
It registers…quick gasp…
raised chin…wide eyes…
rush of adrenaline.
In out…out in of God.
In out…out in of love.
In out of innocence.

Bonnie Marshall