Hugh Seidman

SEIDO KARATE: "KINO HITO NO MI KYO NO WAGAMI "*
For Ernesto Raia

butt on heels, right palm up in the lap under left knuckles, thumbs touching

I shut my eyes and shot a ray of invisible light to Beth Israel hospital
to the first female sensei—as the Master had instructed

tube-entwined, eyelids fluttering under the morphine—she had not known him
and then we stood when he struck the gong

and the tears arose that I would not have accorded myself
as if then for her with whom I had no connection

that night street shouts woke me from the plot of the only child
hunched with its head in its hands as if no one cared if it lived or died

the next day was Saturday and the sun beat on my head
with its more-than-visible rays of light in the first definite day of summer

though she—alive below the noon—now breathed with the mourned
as I sipped my coffee in the park still starving in the tantrum of dream

and then I was down on the subway again to sit seiza before kumite
upon the track to no end but the speed of the hurtling body

amid the remarkable fervor that raises the dead to the status of the living

*”Yesterday the Other Person, Today Myself” From One Day—One Lifetime: An Illustrated Guide to the Spirit, Practice and Philosophy of Seido Karate Meditation by Kaicho (Grandmaster) Tadashi Nakamura (World Seido Karate Organization, New York, 1992, p. 123)

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