Mike Bayles Poet Haibun

As if Settlers in a New Ranch House

I don’t know why I was running
through its open chambers last night.
I last lived in it sixty years ago
but I can’t stop.
I don’t even know if it’s still there
long after it rose from a plot
in a new subdivision in St. Cloud,
and I wonder why I’m seeing it now.
Wooden stakes marked out
streets yet to be named
just carved out of the ground.
My parents showed off the house
to my uncle who came to visit 
after the oats were harvested.
My family’s house occupied a space
in a suburb in the midst of farmlands
as the town grew. A glance 
out the plate glass window showed a stretch
of unfenced yards as far as I could see 
shimmering as the passing sun bled 
into the sky at the end of the day.
A gust of wind blew a tumbleweed
across the lands unincumbered
after letting go of its roots,
this I remember.
My dad said it was from the Dakotas
a land of mystery I could only envision.
My uncle, proud, said it was good
to get dirt under his hands,
and talked about how families
grew from spreads of land.
Time and time again
my dad and uncle spent hours
telling their stories, the stories
filling the life I once embraced. 
My uncle and dad died years ago, 
but have never gone.
I look out the window of my rented space
and laugh to myself as the wind rolls
a crumpled scrap of paper across the yard.

under solace of darkness
running through
memories of my youth

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