on the last day of the calendar
we pause to remember
those who were here
in plain sight
but are no more
having faded since this calendar was new.
It is as John Donne mediated:
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.
and while I embrace the magnitude of
the Reverend Donne's meditation
and the whole-world one-world ideal,
and that I may be diminished by all who fade,
this year will forever be the year
a particular fading diminished me
more than all the others
when the bell tolled for my brother