Today, I watched a heavy insect of
indeterminable species
repeatedly slam into the wide picture windows
of my college library’s
third story as I read a book
analyzing one poem
Teilhard de Chardin wrote
after carrying casualties
on a stretcher
all day
from a war for which no name is presented
to me.

It is inferred de Chardin's time tells of world wars,
yet his poem deals with virginity
and mothers
although of each he was in just one.

Resistance to our ****** urges
and the potency resistance drains
was compared to
minute prosperity provided by the pursuit
of retaining 'innocence'.

The book was named "Eternal Feminine"
and its author's argument functioned
as a double victory for remittance
to a cloud kingdom
and shivering loneliness
seen through invisible barriers
on earth.

Hooray!

He seemed to be
rationalizing the struggle
with sickly pleasure
from repetition of denial.

But I lost interest in his foolish, war-time words.

Watching the flying thing reverse directly,
then continuously speeding ahead
into various windows
which were thought to be bare air,
confused and jolting with every attempt
and frantically circling in my sight,
I was led to thinking of a
demolition derby
at a fairground to which
my parents brought me
each year
of childhood
in the Autumn.

I watched, fascinated
machines stave-off
self-induced decimation
until the very last collision, after which
their motive force removed itself
rushing off to pilot
some variant of bumbling insects
and stretchers
in the form of French theological poets
throughout the past
carrying bodies
into the hands of a college student
backing up determinately
to burst through, toward the one who bares
no sons, who may become warriors
or demagogues.

This kind, secular Hannah
crosses my vision
walks out
beyond frames and doors,
clothes flowing with her
body, like a
sweet corona
sweltering with unseen heat
the fading horizon
of my day.

He sees her reflection on the moon.

Now he may not see space’s vacuous expanse
while
she may not be able to touch time’s clear fabric,
although they each feel
glass’s frozen liquidity
in silence.

Each
continuously strikes their head
against motion’s transparent barriers
with force
stubbornly flapping
into matter
with passion
and wings pulsating
toward a new direction
which does not seal them off
to the outside
of a building
in which they would be swatted,
punished for what they are.

Then the moment passed
and the sun’s thousand year combustion
had reached my neck
and penetrated matter
to massage me;

for eight and a half minutes
it travelled
toward a shadow I pushed
across the table
when the sun suddenly was helpless
to tell me where I ended,
which windows I flew through.

I was on top
de Chardin’s stretcher
as he looked at me to say I shouldn’t
charge in that way,
but I fell down
when he let go
or he evaporated
when I doubted he had lived.

Pressing my cheek against the glass
I reversed my propulsion
like the flown insect
and sounded again
my body's tinging
reverberation
on every surface.