A woman can discover that she will die. A man can discover this also, about himself or about a woman. Either way, a man faces mortality which is like or, at least, not unlike the monolith in 2001 A Space Odyssey.
Rectangular prism.
A prison you are not inside.
Flame is such a prison to a moth. Money is a skyscraper in which no one lives. These jagged plinths. These swaying sideways strike-thrus.
A woman, discovering that she will die, may consult reference books. She may look up the word “discovery” in the OED. She may find that this Latin word replaced an Old English feminine noun: onfundennes.
A woman may note that this earlier word also carried a sense of experimentation. This feminine noun involved trial, effort, error. It was a word less about lifting the lid from the soup. Less about removing the dress to expose the bruising. The tumors.
The fragile veins drifting too close to the skin.
On an old woman’s hands, veins bubble up through the backs of the hands. Tendons.
We will all be musicians then. Life, a cello.
A woman with veins and skin is sometimes a mother. Not always and lately less likely, but still possibly. A mother may discover certain things about herself.
Rage is a thing with feathers and feathers are illegal. But are there feather police? This is the only question that must be dealt with. All milliners entered a doomed profession. It is a thick door, death.
Sometimes a crow uses the shiny to barter with the enemy. And because boredom is, death is not the enemy.
A woman who has developed her intellect has done it to combat boredom and the desire to wear hats.
Thinking is a shiny thing.
She does not conceive of it as combat. Boredom is a way to drown, thinking swims. When a mother thinks of her mortality, she does not imagine not being. She imagines what type of presence her absence will have for her children.
Women, even mothers, are not monoliths, but poets must speak in categories so that they are become like Jesus.
Undoubtedly, this is sad. I agree.
Speaking of men, of women, of milliners, poets, and crows. It is all very sad, but this is the way to onfundennes. One says ten thousand untrue things, and one of them becomes a child.
Featherless.