Opening
Opening
Everything opens
meeting your gaze,
rocks rise
like shouts
seas rush, flooding your feet
trees, leaves bloom
nod over roads
smudged with cement
Your eye sees gold
the prodigal sun has burned
in skies cold blue
and blood blue veins.
Everything opens
eyes, ears, mouth, limbs
open to the surge of rivers,
thick of deserts,
short, sleek coats of animals on farms,
on city pets,
in wilderness where furtive things caress
your back and scurry off.
You see, hear
icy flares of steel
break bone, drain blood;
hear indiscriminate howls
from mouths collapsed in hunger.
You close.
Your eyes close deep against the shapes,
the colors of your known horizon.
And now you only hear
what nerve ducts know—
that seas boil cold,
that earth spins on warped tracks;
The river rises, braids your feet,
your hands like mummies shrivel,
fierce glaciers hug your face;
All through your pile of flesh
you hear the river scream and lash
you like a refugee whose home
will never be on land
but in the waves;
like lightning
splitting flesh,
the river sifts
your quilt of cells
till they dissolve
till you are gone,
hurtled back,
fleshless,
to first burst of life.
Everything opens you
rising on waves
not water,
a phoenix blazing light.
Flesh done.
Light without end.
Mara Lemanis