"Now this bell tolling
softly for another
says to me,
'Thou must die''.
Perchance
he for whom this bell tolls
may be do ill
as that he knows not
it tolls for him.
And perchance
I may think myself
so much better
than I am
as that they
who are about me,
and see my state,
may have caused
it to toll for me,
and I know not that...
No man is an island
entire of itself.
Every man is a piece
of the continent,
a part of the main.
If a clod be washed
away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
as well as
if a promontory were,
as well as
if a manor of thy friend's
or of thine own were.
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 (1572-1631). From "Meditation XVII".
~~
Awakened by sirens-
an ambulence, police cars
and firemen-
each with special duties
to mend the unraveling fabric
of a flat world,
Chad raised his head
which lay cradled
between chapters of the book,
eyes opened wide
from the routine signals
that commence the start
of another day.
"A New Slant On Life"-
for Chad had become
a new beginning.
Despite the sirens heralding
mischief and troubles
of the town, it was
a nice morning
bright with sun,
the air bracing, invigorating,
a sharp contrast to the summers
Chad spent in Chicago
when going to school.
Maybe from the endless stretch
of concrete and steel towering
above the shores of Lake Michigan
and insulating the city
from balmy lake breezes,
or sheer numbers of cars and trucks
extruding CO2 into sinking air,
making it thick and heavy
and giving the sensation
of too little oxygen,
it always felt hotter
than the weathermen said.
Chad realized how much
he'd missed the summers
of Buffalo, the yards ablaze
from spring to fall,
and dreamy times spent
beneath wooded canopies
of Delaware Park.
Not knowing why,
it was different now,
his home town,
since the time first coming
to Chicago and was bowled over
by its glitz and money,
how he vowed to never return
to a bedraggled factory town
like Buffalo to live.
It was as though
he was seeing his hometown
for the first time through
his own eyes.
There seemed to be
a deeper meaning
to everything.
More than a place
to make money,
attain possessions
or live in "style".
from expansive parks
to wide, lazy boulevards
split into by grassy medians
to the Old World architecture
of churches and houses
and public squares,
Chad heard the quiet voices
of masons and carpenters,
draftsmen and engineers,
playing in a timeless recording
of brick and mortar:
"This is who we are."
~~
Chad no sooner had finished
his coffee than he was back
to the book, picking up
where he'd left off.
When came the chapter:
"The Eight Dynamics".
It was as if a tsunami
hit the Erie shore
with cataclysmic change
to reconstitute the landscape
of a flat world.
"I've been asleep all the while.
Disconnected from life.
My life a pretense of existence
as the 'only one',"
Chad chattered aloud.
But he wasn't the "only one".
Chad realized this to be
a lie of the flat world.
He'd penetrated its veil
that masks to hide
the truth from us all,
that forces its will to see
the world for material gain
and drags us into the deep.
To live for family,
community and nation,
the races of mankind,
the animals of the lands
and birds of the skies
and fishes of the seas,
the material being of Earth,
for all of spiritual existence
and God or Infinity.
And life and living meant
to exist and be
as each and every
one.
The idea of a perfect world
between the lines
of the pages
of the book.
Like imagination
when Chad was a child
and beauty commonplace
to everything, and all was bright
and shiny and free
like the stars in the skies,
like his endless dreams.
On day the world turned sour,
as the fruit rots on the tree,
and the stars no longer shone
and forgotten were the dreams.
~~
A flat world
has an ending.
It ends
at a far away cliff
or sudden drop
into the abyss.
Like a tsunami
when the shores are
calm and tranquill
and all are casual
about their way.
In a flat world
the map ends
in oblivion.
But in a true world,
the world which is lived
on self-determined truths,
there is no ending.
The true world
is round,
a sphere.
And the Eight Dynamics-
or circles or spheres-
when life breathes into them
can only
expand.
~~
Copyright 2009 Francis Don Daniels.
All rights reserved.
