The Opening

30 the minnesota review Jeanette Burney The Opening "Perhaps Truth is like the woman who will not be won." —Nietzsche The opening, the nameless woman that we follow, is only a mistake: A bird dropped out of branches drawn on soundless canvas like the sky— his falling out will cause him to remember how to fly. It is not a tunnel seen inside, and dark, that opens on a small round landscape, growing larger with the approach; not even like the lilies on the lake that open to possess the air or be possessed; but a random route of travel chosen by a pair of fated eyes—he's winging up over trees and roofs of houses in the city, alerted to the dust and rain in open spaces— It is periphery in vision that keeps him Burney 31 from the near-collision; and it's the chance for accident that causes plan and order: opening the unseen eye that looks onto a landscape full of obstacles, and knows a flying pattern that it cannot name. for Les Miller ...