Image by Larisa Koshkina from Pixabay
Publication Date: April 2025
Location: On PoetsOnline.org, specifically in the Islands issue.
Genesis: This piece has no discernible history prior to the March prompt from PoetsOnline (to consider the island metaphor, our shared world and the inevitability of death). The prompt then took me on a fun little journey that starts with this lowly shamanic poet pushing back against none other than John Donne, widely seen as ‘the preeminent metaphysical poet of his time‘. In some circles, that’s tantamount to blasphemy!
I was then taken on an exploration and description of ‘my’ island, ending with some speculation as to what happens to it when I die. This is new territory for me.
Full disclosure—had you asked me for the source of the quote ‘No man is an island’ prior to this prompt, I’d have said Shakespeare. I know, I know…
John Donne famously told us that
no man is an island, pointing to
our interdependency; we all rely on others,
perhaps even to the extent that the human race is one
huge entity, consisting of over eight billion
moving parts, all interlinked in ways
we have yet to comprehend.
But—sorry, John!—I do sometimes feel like an island!
Very few have stepped onto my sandy shores.
Almost no one has made it off the beach.
And my interior is a rich, diverse rainforest,
explored by no one except myself.
Even my attempts to describe it to others
soon run into semantic and linguistic limitations
that are outside of my control.
Who but I could hope to follow
the tangled roots of thought and concept
snaking their way through the dark,
rich earth of my subconscious mind,
especially when the mesh of mycelium
makes connections I could never predict;
joins dots in ways I’d never consciously spot;
inspires insights from a higher, deeper place
far beyond the limitations of my egoic self?
Then there are the figs and the palms and
the eucalyptus that soar majestically skywards,
seeking the Light of Truth.
I have climbed part way up a
tiny proportion of these; I’d need
a hundred lifetimes to explore them all,
yet I appear to have only one—
Morrison, another of the Greats, told us,
no one here gets out alive.
What happens to ‘my’ island when I die?
I’d like to think it would gradually sink back
into the surrounding Ocean of Cosmic Consciousness,
reabsorbed into The All, perhaps
to re-emerge at some other time,
in some other Divine Spark, someone
who may climb more of those trees than
I ever expect to manage.