"Prospecting" by Lynn D. Gilbert

You've got to hand it to the old girl;  

at seventy-five she’s in training  

 with a backpack, bound for Alaska  

to trek over the Chilkoot Pass  

to the haunts of her prospector father, 

who made his stake  

in that icy gold rush,  

then used it to become a geologist.  

But don't get her started or you'll have to hear 

the whole family history and, to boot,  see her

demonstrate  

what her guide told her last trip  

about meeting grizzlies:  

Crooning, she backs toward  

the lit kitchen stove, slowly raising and lowering 

her arms like some huge extinct bird.  "That's

how they know you're not an animal."  

How on earth will she make Alaska?  She gets

lost driving from Mobile to Houston,  or even

around the block for groceries  in a strange

town. Her middle-aged offspring  think she's

organic--all that booze, or decades  of grease

in the arteries--but I say  

good luck to her. I just hope  

her last days won’t be spent  

in a shack on that long white slope,  

blanched feet wrapped  

in strips of blanket, grubstake running out, 

and no means either  

to press on toward pay dirt  

or cut for home. 

Lynn D. Gilbert's poems, twice nominated for Pushcart Prizes, have appeared in such journals as Appalachian Review, Arboreal, Blue Unicorn, Consequence, Light, The MacGuffin, Sheepshead Review and Southwestern American Literature. Her poetry volume has been a finalist in the Gerald Cable and Off the Grid Press book contests. A founding editor of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, she lives in an Austin suburb and reviews poetry submissions for Third Wednesday journal.