Lost Dreams

traveling over the prairie I see numerous farms and ranches that sit empty.  Some are large and elegant others clap board and paper.  Around here stucco was popular as there were not many trees. 

Times change and the lure of the big city wails its siren.  children grow up and do not want to stay on the home.  They think their father had it to hard so off they go to the big city looking for the easy life and fun.

Mom and Dad hang onto the farm or ranch until they no longer can work it and they lease the land or sell and move to  town.  The home they built now sits empty, dust rolls in the tiniest of crevices, attics fill up and mother nature roars trying to reclaim its bounty.  On hillside overlooking rolling hills the empty buildings become a monument to faded glory days.  Winds of the past float by the rafters, over the roofs, shaking the few trees and timbers rattle in the breeze.

Mom and Dad’s kids want another life, they see the bright lights and fly to them like bugs on a hot June eve.  When the folks pass on the children are mournful but do not want to live on the homestead.  Up for auction goes the memories.  Dreams are placed on auction blocks.  Highest bidder takes the faded dream and lets it sit.  The land is still worked, cattle graze and birds climb the clouds.

 

 

Soon Mother nature will have her way, timbers will crack, walls will fall and roofs collapse.  This is where dreams had become reality.  A place of independence, no one looking over the shoulder.  A piece of ground to call his own.

Neighbors drive by saying, that was the __________ place, Bill Jones was born there.  I used to play with his daughter.  There are other memories that drift through the trees.  travel in the waving limbs.

A land that was changed by government policy, torn up by greed, destroyed by greed, restored by common sense.  Feeling the tugs of greed and envy, a small battle ground in a larger war.

 

Winds of time stack the grains to drift to another wave. Curling down the even side forming ripples.  Drifts angling to new heights to blow down ward to another drift.  grains forever moving, heeding the call of the wind.  A Siren sings in the branches, the melody of onward.  Beckoning to new grains tumbling over each.