Here's my first try...
Eleanor Graves, 14; Donner Pass, February 1847
I dreamt about it all across the plains:
a kingdom-come, an everlasting day
for idling weeks and weeks and years away,
forgetting crowded wagons and the stains
of trail dirt. Not that heaven'd lack for pains.
It might get dreary: months of sunshine May.
A girl could run clean out of ways to play,
and even California sometimes rains.
I still dream in this forest of no leaves,
whose fetid pools reflect the chillsome suns
of days as cruel as knowledge of the sheaves
we shed as deadweight down below. My breath
grows short. I long to float where the river runs
and so live ever, not just swoon to death.
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