September 25, 2002 ~ Sunday evening
I’ve been here for four months now and I’m finally putting the final touches (so to speak) on my office. That can be narrowed down to finally hooking up my printer/scanner … dusting (for the zillionth time) … organizing the last of what was on my desk … rehanging wall art … putting things on my bulletin board … and going through roughly a million magazine clippings I’ve saved over the years of silly cartoons, dog pics, and whatnot.
And in the pile of whatnot, I came upon a poem I wrote for a small town in North Carolina. Morganton. I was traveling about, searching out a new hometown at the time (May 2021), and had been receiving their local newspapers and online event flyers as the town sounded so wonderful – on paper/online. When I arrived there, well … to be kind, I’ll just say, nope. Not so much. But, at that time the Chamber of Commerce was asking for entries about what a small town, more specifically – their small town – meant to the locals.
I wasn’t a local and it wasn’t about their town, but to me it’s the town I keep searching for. My someday small hometown.
Homesick …
Homesick … for a place I have never lived – never been. Where trees and hills cradle friendships, neighbors lend a hand, crickets sing their songs in wild concert.
I long to belong to a place that supports whomever you are or hope to be. Mainstreet welcoming strangers, strangers becoming family.
Evolving, caring, encompassing – where sunsets linger as long as neighbors on porches, sprinkling stories in periwinkle twilight and the calls to come home.
Home to a place I have never lived – never been. Where I can lay my head and breathe while fireflies kiss my dreams. Always welcome and embraced.
So I will never, ever again be … homesick.