Martial

You’re under attack.
Waste no time.

Release the other —
surrender it,
let go,
watch…

whatever works for you.

Postscript:
The title primes one for aggression or warfare, but the poem subverts that expectation. Martial here evokes training, not in battle against enemies, but in the cultivation of awareness. The warrior’s vigilance becomes the practitioner’s mindfulness. The first two lines function as a kind of koan of urgency: we are always “under attack” by distraction, clinging, identification, desire — the internal forces that fragment the mind.

The poem functions like a short Zen kata — precise, economical, rhythmic. Each line mirrors a movement: strike, center, yield, release. The visual shape of the poem mirrors breath cycles: compression → pause → exhalation → spaciousness.

The ending offers an almost comic release. It democratizes enlightenment: there is no single method, no rigid orthodoxy.

Image credit: Photo taken with the HST Wide Field Planetary Camera-2 (WFPC2) on March 10, 1997, just before Mars opposition, when the red planet made one of its closest passes to the Earth (about 60 million miles or 100 million km).