The Opening

by Nathalie F. Anderson

It happens not only in mythical places —

in Vrindavan, say, its burnt hills split

by the river's jagged edge, midnight coming on

and everything waiting — water's corrugations,

steel gray on cinder gray, lying in wait, and the

blown grove of coral and acacia trees just opening.

It was like that, driving the inland highway

out past the dark tobacco barns, the sky full of stars

and the road full of deer, moving slow and ominous

as comets across the black–top. For a good half–hour

I had my head out the window, shivering

between earth and sky, meteors falling and

the white tails of the white–tailed deer held up like candles

under the pines. Then a car rounded the curve, veered

at me. Anything could be out there. A man could split

your windshield, hold his iron hand on your arm, wrench

you open. Night's like that. Wherever you stand, you're

circled, shadowed by it. I've felt it even

in my own back yard, the concrete walk–way

fluid as a river, smoke–gray between the gray

tomatoes; my hands a blur, the skin barely pearly,

slicing through the air that veils them, cupping the dark

away. Anything could be out there, where the wild grape

grows back thick and thorny, and the blown grove holds its breath.

Anything could be there. A man could be there

lighting the thicket with his own skin, the grape leaves

that cushion him lit light green, the arbor glowing

pale as a paper lantern. Look: his hand's blue

as lapis lazuli ground fine, bound to the page, then

burnished with agates; his lip's bright red for kissing

or biting; and his garment's brilliant yellow, dyed

with the piss of cows fed all their lives on mango.

Will you enter that intimacy, pillow your hair

on mulberry leaves, your skin stained blue from the fruit?

The wind's a silk hem, pulled slow over grass. He could

brush you with a squirrel's tail, cup your dark, open you.

Love's blind and blinds. Don't we know that in the West? Who sees

very far into any heart or thicket? And when did a god

last fuck a girl in a garden? True blue love's rare

as a glimmering deer or a white–tailed star, unlikely

as Krishna. Open your eyes' black waters. Anything

could be out there. My skin shivers blue at the thought.