"Donne and I in the car; involved in mankind"
I’m on my way to a poetry reading and old John Donne, dead since 1631,
gets in the passenger side at a red light, pulls the door shut
and looks over at me. I’m surprised he doesn’t reek of death
and rot and decay. He looks pretty good for a guy
who’s 400 years old, and he smells like cloves.
I want to tell him about his meditation.
I want to apologize for all of the us, for turning it into
a Hallmark card quasi-poem. It was a mediation first.
I want to tell him about Hemingway and his
For Whom the Bell Tolls.
“Are the Catholics still around?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. “Catholicism persists, still.”
“And the Anglicans?”
“Yes,” I say. “They’re still around.”
“And women. Has anybody figured out what they want?”
“No. Women are still a beautiful mystery.”
“Are there women where we’re going?”
“Women poets,” I say. “Lots of them.”
Donne is quiet for a long time – fusses his collar,
pulls it tight around his neck, rakes his hand through his hair.
He clears his throat.
“What are those beads on your wrist?” he says
“Buddhist Prayer beads,” I say. “Not a rosary.”
“Buddhist?” he says. “What’s that?”
I shoulder check and change lanes.
“No man is an island,” I say. “Entire of itself.”
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII:
"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
--John Donne