A piece of earth broke free

and fell to the sea below

 

                              …swallowed by the waves

 

a little breath of clay

small beauty

washed to mud

has disappeared

 

and the vast, vast world

is now a little smaller for it

 

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We NEED to read and understand the words of John Donne (below). We live like a cliff that laughs when a piece of it slides into the ocean not realizing that it is our own self sliding away…

Meditation XVII: No man is an island…

"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