Sunflowers

Sunflowers: A Collection of Poems is a tapestry of actual daily journal entries masked in metaphors and poetry as Douglas finds his own way to get over the hurt of a lost love. To a greater sense, it serves as his personal forum, his therapy, as he reopens old wounds and takes a second look at a past love affair only to discover post mortem what love really means to him. This book is filled with his inner most intimacy, his cryptic pain and his desperate need to hold on to what he earned and lost some time ago.

Somewhere along the way, he discovered how to unlock those neatly and hidden away passing thoughts and transform them into something tangible so when he takes a second look at his transcripts, he finds a person almost opposite to what he hopes to reflect in the mirror in front of him. Soon he begins to place a more granular look to the person in the mirror, realizing that love is less about fleeting passion and more about growing and evolving plural than singular. There are also subtle poems to how he finds himself in nature and where he fits into the grand scheme of things. Whether it’s a simple walk on a beach or fields of meadows he seems to carry his thoughts of love with him like lint to a pocket. 

Douglas Rue is a quintessential native Floridian. He was educated at both St. Augustine’s’ College and DePaul University. With his need and desire to advance his career, a good part of his early adulthood was spent relocating from the East to West Coast and ultimately finding his way back home to the Florida Gulf Coast. He has a background in Computer Engineering with degrees in Computer Science, Telecommunications and Business. Douglas has held many key technical positions in Enterprise Networking supporting multi-national organizations in their design and support of global networks from both a Telephony and Data Communications perspective. As an Adjunct Professor, he has also lectured Network Engineering courses at colleges both in Los Angeles and Atlanta. He taught his first college courses (Data Communications) in Southern California while still in his early twenties.

Writing, as a hobby, seems to be just the right opportunity as he approaches his next chapters in life. As he puts it, “writing seems to heal wounds that for long I denied their existence.” His first two books of poetry, "Sunflowers: A Collection of Poems " and "Between Sand and Sea" are his way of exercising emotions he thought he had neatly locked away. As a result of his writings, through his use of metaphors, he has discovered the importance of expressing his acceptance of love and his continued growth in learning how to give love in return unconditionally.