Falling Into Focus

the air thickens as we work.

steam mists over the white-sheeted windows,

fog forming indoors from the flying sweat

& heavy exhalations of the class.

January, but someone opens the door anyway;

cold air gasps in.

*

finally not afraid of falling, I go down

over & over until

the teacher is a blur,

the room hazy.

my partner’s shoulder, face, swim into focus

as a breeze cuts across the floor.

*

to one side of the shrine, the flushed face

of the single blossom is first

an expanding red globe. then grassblades

thin-edged and sharp, arch

across the same space. not swords, not hands,

still my gaze slides down and holds where they meet.

. . . . .

written circa 1989-1990, (c) P. F. Anderson.

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This poem describes my first (or second?) real experience with Hatsu-Geiko, the martial arts tradition of a vigorous practice on New Year’s Day — the first lesson of the year, the first practice of the year. This was at Chicago Aikikai back when they were located on Howard Street. There was literally so much sweat in the air it was hard to breathe. The flower described was an anthurium.

I was recently cleaning house and found an old printout of this poem, in dot matrix print on yellowed paper. I’d been looking for this one, and for another about sharpening stones in water sounding like crickets. Finding this gives me hope that the other one isn’t lost forever. I wish I’d written more poems about martial arts when I was young and vigorous.

Today, I tried to watch my dojo’s practice over Zoom. It’s been over a thousand days since I got COVID and developed Long COVID. I’m grateful they set up Zoom, which allows me to at least watch. The first couple years, I could only watch for a few minutes, a half hour or an hour sometimes. Martial arts is such work, both physically and intellectually. Even watching it exhausts me. I’m a lot better, but still infinitely far from being able to ever do anything like that this poem describes.

Some of the folk in our dojo recently had COVID again, and I worry that they will also develop Long COVID. Today’s practice was listening to broken audio of men talking about budo spliced with static and silence. Cognitive practice. I don’t know that anyone was actually up to practicing with their bodies. The camera never came on, so I couldn’t tell if anyone was moving. Today is New Year’s Eve. Tomorrow … tomorrow? What will be my Hatsu-Geiko this year?