The Wind and the Young Heart-Warrior

Photo: US Fish and Wildlife Service

For 364 days the disciplined student

of martial arts –

a young heart-warrior –

had walked a long ways

down the coast,

at the edge of the tide’s finger,

to where the storm had long ago

stripped the walking-board planks from

the pier pilings.

Once there,

he’d climb, effortlessly, to the top of a piling,

a piling that had been swallowed,

all but six feet,

by time and shifting sands.

Once there,

he’d root his bare right foot on concentric rings

that had yet to let go of the tale

of the piling’s life as a tree,

and he’d lift his left leg into the air,

and he’d extend both his arms

and also begin to lift them high

and he’d envision passersby

and, most importantly, his Teacher

being so very impressed with his

undeniable perfection of Crane position.

But,

As luck would have it –

every day,

every time he knew himself to be

a fraction of a second from achieving

his most-sought-after achievement,

a large, emphatic gust of wind would

charge out from the sea oat whistling dunes

and blow him, so ruthlessly and unelegantly,

off the piling and into a humble heap

on the hard, repetition-compressed sands below.

And he’d get up,

brush off,

and go home.

On the 365^th day,

when all had proceeded as it had

on all the days before,

the young, crumpled heart-warrior

looked up at the sky with rage

and screamed out to his Teacher,

The Wind:

“Why do you hate me so?

I am your most dedicated student and a good boy!”

And The Wind,

smiling and chuckling, said:

“The lesson of this past year has not

been about achieving perfection

on a post,

but about learning to let

your Soul fly.”

© 2010-2013/Jamie K. Reaser

Published in "Note to Self: Poems for Changing the World from the Inside Out" (www.hiraethpress.com)