A Troubled Soul. {Poetry}

By Tom Welch

It’s not for the all the pain that I have caused
For that’s been long forgotten
It’s for the one I thought I was
But have not been from fateful time
When I was first begotten.

But for the person I might possibly yet be
I hold out hope on some bright, sunlit days
I bask in light. I hope, begin to dare.
On other, darker days is bleak despair.

Perhaps with passing time I’ll come to find
the element not included in myself that I am missing.
I cannot trust myself to act. In my mind
I first must always ask permission
of myself, shall I address the other?
Do I want to take that fearsome chance,
risk being agent of distress (or just a bother)
To a soul, with its own life of happenstance
One struggling to make sense of its existence,
To maintain that very necessary persistence.

What others find quite natural to ask,
To make cause with fellow human being
Is for me a quite deliberate task.
For I’m not capable of simply seeing
Where might be possibilities of success
Instead, the littered instances of past mess.

I hesitated then. I paused and pondered …
Will this be the one, the friendship that works out
for two souls, to the benefit of both? My thought
then was it might just be. Why was it not?
I think I know but all along I’ve wondered.

Tom Welch has an M.A. in Education from Stanford University and is a former high school math teacher, US Army Specialist 5, executive at General Motors, and has 10 years experience leading groups of parents and children in a community education program that explores the effects of addiction on families. He has also worked for several years with adjudicated teenagers using these same program materials. He has published a book available on Amazon entitled “Raising Healthy Children” which is available as an e-book and soft cover. His blog contains this story and many others. His wife Gitta’s Husky, Spirit, is 14 years old and loves cold weather, the colder the better. It is Tom’s assignment to walk the dog every morning without complaint. Tom loves to write as ideas come to him. This story came to him as a title, and he wrote it straight out, from top to bottom with only minor wording revisions. You can look for his articles in Elephant Journal as well, but be patient—his first indication of interest from them came only this week