Dogwood Memoirs

By Xlibris US

The majesty of daily life is sometimes forgotten in-between our busy lives. I like to imagine that these poems are those brief forgotten thoughts that we have on the commute from work to home or sitting in a sunny park on our lunch break. With these poems I hope to attempt to create, in words, these experiences that we as human beings go through in life with symbolism and vivid prose. I hope that you, as the reader, enjoy these works, and that, ultimately, you find something to take away that is uniquely your own that neither I, the author, nor anyone else had thought of before.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499066784

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Copyright © 2014 by Christopher Lynn Cates.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-4990-6679-1

                eBook            978-1-4990-6678-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 08/25/2014

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CONTENTS

Acceptance-

Enlightenment-

Clam Chowder-

In-Between the Etherospehere-

Glendale Swamp-

La Voyage Nuit-

Morning Has Broken-

Rebirth-

Strafuminos-

The Day-Dream of Mencius-

The Dilemma-

To the Gates of Petra-

Tomb-

Fall-

Winter-

ACCEPTANCE-

The mind unravels from right to left

and the sun scared of its own reflection

lies content to withdraw into its irradiant transitory tomb

for the remainder of the afternoon.

Leaving the world to contemplate upon

the day’s labor,

the week’s speculations,

the month’s apprehensions,

the year’s lamentations,

and a of lifetime’s shortcomings.

I, myself, acknowledge that these

are the ways and means of the world.

For love to be born out of my own trepidation,

and for death to be the only acknowledgement applicable to my existence.

I accept these ways and means,

as a child accepts their bedtime,

or that peas are what is upon one’s plate.

Neither happily, of course,

nor with a tranquility that comes with understanding,

but instead with a steadfast disgust fixture upon my brows.

As if my heavy brow and out thrown chin,

will make the vegetables reconsider the error,

of their particular circumstance

which they occupy within my own feeble reality.

My acceptance does not come

from desperately entrenched apathy towards the world,

nor from the hidden knowledge of some ancient wisdom,

but instead from the tireless restless energy of an animal,

in a purgatorial zoo,

constantly thrashing against the bars,

sprinting at concrete-walls in fervent and desperate hope

that