This is a poetic letter to poet John Donne. It's featured in my 2nd book To John Donne and Other Poetic Letters.

Special Note: The book, To John Donne and Other Poetic Letters, this poem is featured in has now become a Eppie finalist in Poetry for 2002.

They say you are a man to value.
Generations have spoken praise of you.
I write to you in kind greeting
for you have written a poet's pen
sings with momentous voice.
Death has pride, John!
in the coal pitch blackness,
Death has pride, sir.
When you said,
"No man is an island,"
you were right.
We need human contact.
The touch called love
that blooms a soul like a rose.
I envied your life as you lived it.
The plague must have ripped
at the darkness and ignorance
of your countrymen to shreds.
My sympathy endures.
I know why you think death
Has no pride:
The soul cries, shrieks
from losing its identity.
The world it once knew,
falling under foot,
spirit collapsing, imploding
from madness within.
The heart's crumbling vessels
bleeding life's essence that
makes a man or woman whole.
The horror, sorrow, and pity a heart incurs.
It is a vast impurity that takes a mind
To restless, bitter sanity.
But how do you deal with the loss?
You don't.
It's an impossible task
left to wiser men
whose hearts are wiser still.
How can the mad be gentle
and still the countenance, of his woe?
Agape the sun and moon-
twist them until the dawn is black
and the dusk is white as day.
It is what I feel when I lose a loved one
I must say John I wish it no more.
I bid you good morrow,
and fond farewell.
I end an apprentice to your name,
and all you believe in.
May God watch over your countrymen
and let no pestilence, arise again.
Perhaps death has pride after all,
let him catch a star,
take his mad cows with him,
and let humanity be.