Lesson Well Learned
It was hot. Well over 110 degrees.
The air was hot. No trace of a breeze.
Sand as far as the eye could see.
This could well be the end of me.
So thought the miner as he walked.
Alone in the desert with his thoughts.
He came to the desert looking for gold.
Rumors said it was there, so, on he rode.
Till his horse stepped in a hole.
It staggered then went into a roll.
The miner was thrown free.
The horse had broken it’s leg, you see.
The poor horse had to be shot.
The minor didn’t know if he could or not.
In the end he pulled the trigger.
‘Now, how do I get out of here?’, he figured.
He started walking West.
Occasionally stopping to get rest.
After a day or so, his water was running low.
He rested under a small out cropping.
A breeze blew the sand off the topping.
He looked at it, but, he couldn’t believe.
The out cropping was gold., if he wasn’t deceived.
He checked it out much more closely.
It was quartz with veins of gold mostly.
He was ecstatic!! He would stake a claim.
But, he didn’t know which way he came.
He didn’t know where he was
The wind was blowing with a buzz.
Soon the out cropping might disappear
under the sand and not reappear.
He decided to carry out all he could.
He worked hard where the quartz stood.
Exhausted, he finally had a large pile.
He decided to sit and rest for awhile.
He stuffed all the quartz in his pack.
It was really heavy on his back.
Then he realized, as it was told.
He couldn’t walk out with that much gold.
He buried most of it in the sand.
Then left with a couple pieces like a man.
He would have died if he hadn’t been found
face down in the sand with no one around.
He still nearly died from dehydration.
His life was saved by the Indian Nation.
The quartz paid for another horse and supplies.
Then, for the next 20 years he tried
to find that out cropping in the desert sand.
He covered every inch of that land.
He still thinks back to his decision time.
Carry out a lot of gold or leave some behind.
Though he never found the gold again.
He knows he made the choice to win.
For he finally realized that life is worth
all the gold there is on earth.——————R. W. Johnson—–(2013)