Fencer's Blessing

When you step onto the strip,
it is yours.
That lean length of space is all the world
and completely in your hands.
Others come to fail in this
your country.
Behind you, all you are,
all you have known,
a hundred men, through you
wield that bright silver
dancing blade.
You are the fruit of their labors
and the child of their wars.
All that they once were
is condensed in who you are now.

You are tsunami, fluid and unstoppable.
You strike as hard as the earth, each blow the fall of a mountain.
Your spirit is a fire, bright enough to blind them, and consume their every reserve and hope.
You are air, impossible to hit.
The coil of your arm, the flex of your thigh, hold unseen potential.

You are a force of nature,
a blight on their hope.
They have crossed into your country,
and will not leave it unchanged.

Ignorant,
they do not know that they face
a man who will bring the whole force of who he is
to keep and claim the strip he stands upon.

Show them,
let them see it in you.
They will know fear
and falter.