David Joseph Yates

Happy Birthday Captain Dave!

When my grandson Augi was diagnosed with leukemia, Dave became his best "pal". Everyone, who knew Dave well, knows about the "Polio Soldiers". He had the widest shoulders and the deepest pocket of anyone I've ever known when there was a sick child or old person in need. Generous to a fault. He wore old boots that didn't fit because they belonged to a friend that he had lost, Charlie Ray. I can only imagine what he and Charlie Ray are up to today to...

Happy Birthday Dave!

There was a place that Dave went to escape from the "busy" world that he lived in. He cherished his time there and the friends that waited anxiously when they knew he was on his way. In later years, he didn't tell them he was there for a few days so that he would have time to just enjoy his friend Brad and the farm.
This is what he wrote in the fall of 199. This one's for you Brad.

To reach the place called "Total Loss"
You've miles to...

Today, your birthday, a special day to remember you and honor your time here with us and acknowledge the footprint you left behind. You loved many and many loved you, we all still do. I know that you would be happy to see the words that were woven so well in this guest book. I hope that everyone who reads them will find a small piece of you and have some comfort in one of your greatest gifts...the gift of poetry!

This was written for Alice.
December 1999

She...

To you I pledge my love.
You are in each breathe I take.My heart is no longer mine,it now belongs to you.
My love knows not of limits.
You are my sun and moon,
my earth and my sky, with your eyes of blue..

To you, I give without condition:
The love of a thousand ages.
I cherish the ground on which you stand.
I cherish being able to share "Our Hallowed ground.
Come be with me, "My Angel" and allow me, the opportunity to show you..
I am...

To awake each day with you in my arms, is to awake in heaven to the song of a thousand angels.
To share laughter with you is to remember a small brook of yester year, laughing as it passed.
To hold and protect you is to myself, a feel safe place to be..
Yes, love even hero's in Workboots need heroes.
To think of you or "Us","A Pair", is to feel happiness beyond imagination.
Actually, I feel I have loved you for an eternity.Perhaps in another place or life.
I...

I know this thing you call death
Cold of hands, vile of breath

Devoid of all that may seem good
A heart of stone or locust wood

I know the emptiness it brings
I've heard the awful song it sings

Seen the widows and babies cry
Ask God myself the questions why?

Ask God myself the question why?
Begged and pleaded for his reply

Why just now and not tomorrow
Must I bear this dread some sorrow

Then my God...

Oh Mother of Mother, I've questions to ask
Of long ago places that rest in your past
Of heroes on stallions, that ride in our mind
Share with me yours, if you'd be so kind
Ah Mother of Mother, oh silver of gray
Was there ever a moment, was there ever a day?
Did strong arms embrace you in a mystical place
While kisses were woven through the hair in your face?
Oh Mother of Mother your secrets I'll keep
To bring out & cherish while the world is...

The dust was a cloud atop the dirt road
and bramble and berries are all that now grow
Around an old Chevy, an old pickup truck
Now rusting away quietly in the place it was tucked

No longer do children ask for a ride,
they now take the hood on the snow for a slide.
It's old tires are quite tired now
Like the fading old barn or the rusted old plow.

But oh in it's day of shiny new paint
Parked in the shade bathed like a saint

I bet we can find a mountain tall
Playing host to a waterfall
At the falls, there you and I
Attend the ballet of the dragonfly

Where behind the waters we may stand
and you be woman and I be man
Magic moments in the mist
What a passion lies within a kiss

A place alive and green
divided neatly by a stream
Where people meet, like you and I
and genies and fairies & dragonflies.