Another postcard from me to you.

DIRT

I only know a small parcel of land.  The dirt, weather, and bends in the road I know like the back of my hand.

After traveling a far distance with a broken heart, I realize I will not know this land like the other one.  Without this knowledge of the dirt, can I be ok? Or, will a piece of my heart have to die?  Is it already dead?

The dirt of my youth is the only place I will ever understand.  I intuit there.  I eat there.  I close my eyes and drive the streets as if my eyes were open.  No need for a map.

Commentary:

I have been pondering the dynamic of living in a new place. I still feel like a visitor, but will that change? Will this place ever be home as the town I lived in as a boy?  I like this poem because it reflects the angst and tension I feel daily.

I also experience this tension as a counselor. Counseling is much like this poem. I travel to the distant homelands of my clients. They take me to the places that are familiar, where good things shaped them, but also where myth, pain, and harm overtook the walls of their safe and secure homeland. We talk, we cry, we get angry, but somehow we find rest, voice, and hope as I am a visitor for a time in the land they call home.

Being a counselor, I am always a visitor, never to assume I can or should stay and by no means ever be arrogant enough to think I fully understand.  I am a visitor passing by hoping to understand and love as much as I can, but fully knowing that I, at some instrinsic level, am tied to my own plot of dirt that I must look at, invite others to come with me and help me repair and redeem the dirt of my youth.