What IS this? Where'd it come from? What's it for? (Do you feel it too?)

[AlienGirl]

Excerpts from Tarpan and Aurochs by Albert Goldbarth:

There are paintings in which the souls of men are
breaking out of their bodies and rising like steam
from warm, torn bread, like steam with a very
calm face--and you see the painters really
believed in this, along with gold and rats
it's what the Middle Ages was all about.
The point of view is almost that of the souls'
--the flesh we take for granted, so everything paint
can mean to semblance is given to spirit's
verisimilitude. Finally, looking long enough,
the opposite occurs: it's the bodies of men we need
convincing of did we really belong
to those things on the ground? (A waft, a spark,
is enough now.) Could such rough husks be ancestral?
***
I said fetal REM. The friend of a friend has found
the migratory stopping-place for North America's
monarchs: in the mountains north of Mexico City
37.000 drowse in conifers, one dun molecule or two of
thorax-susurration away from not being
anything at all...
...That the fetuses' eyelids correspond
to one of those idling butterflies, I know, the way
we all know the travel of light though perhaps not its formula.
***
There's no measure for that distance. --But
you. Eventually you'll be called; you'll go...
But we'll be called, so must prepare; must even
understand our hands on rocks, in sun, regress
to lizards; even learn to love the light the way the nuclei
of algae do, entire; even learn to love the dust and
even the subatomic bones of the dust; and make
the tarpan and aurochs, name them, know them eye to eye.

Today I started wondering about the feeling this poem (and other really great poetry) evokes in me. It's about the same as the feeling I get looking up at the stars and knowing that light left a hundred thousand years ago. What is the source of the reason I cry when I see the meeting of the incidental and infinite? It's a form of pleasure/fear/sorrow, but what on earth lights up in my brain? What combination of neurotransmitters create this? What is it for, evolutionarily? Do other creatures feel it--is it what the tern feels pulling him from north and south poles to compel him on his lonely flight?

So, gimme your best guesses, neurological, evolutionary, psychological. Help me figure out this feeling (I sure hope you've all felt it too, because it is very enjoyable).

Tucker

[AlienGirl]

1. Kick...anybody?

[Robeson]

2. O.K.....

...lot of symbolism there...

What I got out of it, is the interconnection between the earth, i.e nature, us, and time.

Also, I got certain symbollic references out of it. The first part reminds me of a Salvadore Dali painting, which evokes much of what the poet said. Yes, some see him as obvious, but, never-the-less, it's there.

The second part reflects on the connection of life, hence "the fetuses' eyelids correspond to one of those idling butterflies"...to me it is symbollic imagery.

The third part ties the first two together in summary.

That's what it evokes in me, anyways.