River Of Dreams

 
Oh what stories those waters could tell
in the voices of men calling up from the deep;
the whispers from simply marked graves on the shore,
and buildings that now only echo the wind.

From Bennett to Dawson, they flocked,
thirty-thousand seekers all searching for gold
driven by the thirst for adventure, and greed,
headed for fortune at Bonanza Creek.

They stripped all the land of its timbers
to build themselves seven thousand boats
and in 1897 a virtual flotilla set sail
but the river fought back with a vengeance.

Three hundred died chasing their dreams 
through the whirlpool of narrowing Miles Canyon;
one hundred boats torn to pieces
in the perils of the great Whitehorse Rapids.

Many a mighty sternwheeler was lost,
from Laberge to the Teslin, where the famed Thirtymile
cloaked swift currents under the clearest blue water,
claiming more boats than all of the river combined.

With Hootalinqua and Shipyard Island behind
and gold fields ahead like the rainbow's end,
the survivors staked claims for their fortunes,
displacing the native Ta’an Kwach’an.

Now the rush of the Klondike is long in the past
and the stories are told in the ripples of waves,
sung to the returning drums of the Ta’an,
as the mighty Yukon runs unchallenged again.




                       november   2002

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