Sojourns…: Memoirs of a Soul Adrift…

By Clifford Dean Craig

“Sojourns... " represents a personal look inside the heart, mind, and soul, of a fellow mortal. One who, like yourself wanders through this unpredictable mortality, seeking definition, self-identity, belonging, love, and purpose. “Sojourns…” even as the human experience, covers a vast array of emotions from lightheartedness to self-doubt, from shame to love, pride, fear, grief, and wonder. What are we without our emotions and experiences? “Sojourns…” invites the readers to ask the deeper questions of themselves; to find the measure of their humanity and the purpose of their existence. While it is not Frost, Goethe, or Shakespeare, “Sojourns…” is an intensely intimate look at what it is that makes us who we are. I have also included the works of my daughters as they seem to express the same sentiments only with much more clarity. If one heart is touched, one tear is shed, I am justified in my efforts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796051476

Clifford Dean Craig

I am a quiet, private person (some have said “reclusive”!) I spent 31 years of my life working for a government entity in foreign relations and diplomatic fields. It was there that I developed a marked disdain for anything political. I am therefore apolitical. I have always believed in self-reliance, self-sufficiency and personal responsibility as well as a sense of integrity and moral responsibility to ones’ community, nation and the world as a whole. I maintain that there is no shortage of people willing to tell you their theories on everything from pea soup to philosophy. Finding someone who can listen however is nearly impossible. Listening may soon go the way of silence becoming another forgotten element in our modern world. If you want to make a difference learn to listen! If we hope to make a difference in life. That may be the most important thing one can do.

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 by Clifford Dean Craig.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2019911465

ISBN:              Hardcover              978-1-7960-5149-0

                        Softcover                978-1-7960-5148-3

                        eBook                     978-1-7960-5147-6

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 Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 08/21/2019

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Contents

A Dedication….

Across The Moor

Message In A Bottle

Listen

Soup-or-Stichin’

Amiable Annoyance

Colloquial Consternation

Overfededness

Puppy Love

The Secrets Rainbows Hide

Nuair An Thagann Deireadh Fo’mhair

No Step Retraced

To Mother

Prism

Forsaken

Friends

The Gardener

Stay The Wind!

Wanderers Serenade

Raymond Stubbleman

Paths Once Shared

Promises

Presentiment

Proverbium

Eden Regent

My Little Boy

Interrogative

En Passant

A Solitary Litany

A Soul’s Hearth

His Song

Before the Cock Shall Crow

Footsteps on the Street at Night

Let Me Walk A Country Road

In Dreams Awake

Enlightenment

Tempest

The Light Between

Orphans Prayer

AGITATION

THIRST

NOVEMBER TREE

SUMMER DAZE

Lullaby

The Moon Follows

Remember Who You Are

Of What Worth?

Lonnies Song

At Forest’s Gate

Being a collection of the verse and prose of Clifford Dean Craig

With contributions from my daughters, Emilee

Brooke King-Ward and Sarah Elyse Carlisle

for

Julie

also,

In memory of

Robert & Mary Ann

and

Maurlin & Barbara

A Dedication….

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To All who Love, who through their Loving, Live…

In living, toil and from those toils Give…

And in Giving, learn both to Love and Live…

To All who Wander ’neath stars and sky,

Remembering the innocence of youth,

As though a whispered breath of night,

The gentle kiss of childhood

Warm on the sleeping brow,

that waking fades and age obscures…

’til they with hollow hearts and empty hands

Upon the parapets of conquest stand

‘cross endless seas, in distant lands;

Sand their precious lives absorbing,

Avenged in costly victory!

Stand hollow eyed as heroes,

Though without a crown…

Turn weeping eyes to silent stars

As though a whispered breath of night,

The Heroes oath of millennia

Through gritted teeth repeated…

Mother! Mother! Are you there?

As tears the soot from faces trails.

"Mother! Mother? I’m coming home!

Please bake a loaf for me! …"

To all who Love and through their toils,

love and life will give, for such is the greatest

share of Love and thus the greatest gift of Life…

and greater Love has none to give than these

who whisper in their dying dreams,

O Mother! Please?

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Across The Moor

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Silence reigns upon the moor,

so seldom in Her depths disturbed

slumbers ’neath a shrouded mound,

where time alone may pass unheard.

So still the moisture-laden air,

yet full the warning, vague the fear:

"Cross quick this moor, on cautious feet!

Neither dare one stray nor tarry here!"

As twilight stirs the misty realm;

calling forth the hosts from weedy banks,

now summoned to the evening halls,

fog-wraiths form up in mournful ranks.

With dusk the solemn host sets