Before, it is not only nerves. It is the body already knowing the hour has come. The mind clears itself the way a hall is swept before the lord enters. I stand, or I go over the knee, and the ordinary day falls away.
What remains is a single line of attention: your hand, the implement, the count that has not yet begun. The stomach tightens, yes, but beneath that is a strange steadiness. I have chosen this.
The house has chosen this. There is no argument left to win.
During, the first strikes are sharp, and the body answers before the mind can name it. Heat rises, the skin wakes, the breath shortens.
Then the rhythm finds me. The pain is real, but it stops being only pain. It becomes the measure of the moment. Each stroke is a sentence that says, you are still here, you are still mine, the day has not taken you.
The mind quiets like a field under rain. Thoughts thin out. What is left is the weight of your hand, the sound, the rising warmth, and the knowledge that I do not have to hold anything together while this lasts. The act itself holds me.
Before the rod, the soul kneels in its own hall,
and the dust of the ordinary day is swept aside.
The heart beats like a drum before battle,
yet the will has already laid down its sword.
Under the stroke the flesh cries out its old language,
but the spirit, unburdened, walks the narrow path
between fire and stillness.
Each blow is a seal upon the bond,
and the man who receives it is, for that hour,
no longer scattered across the world,
but gathered wholly into the hand that claims him.
No comments:
Post a Comment