It's my job to bring the sun up every morning. Three whacks. No more. No less. Years ago, I signed a contract and, never too ambitious by nature, I've stayed with the same company. Lately, my arms have been hurting, aching at night, a source of tenderness all day. This has affected my concentration.
One moonlit night, I trudged to work up the hill past the expressway, detoured over the green lawns of the cemetery facing a retirement home and crossed through the shopping center parking lot. At the gate to my firm's facility, I punted the wind crushed newspapers and stamped on the encroaching dandelions. Then I removed the chain and padlock and crawled into the tin shack.
My work place is a windowless, five foot cube of seamless galvanized metal. A subdued glow, a residual energy, radiates from a four foot diameter gong of bronze and copper. It stands opposite the small entry.
I closed the door. I reached diagonally to the left to touch my mallet and my polishing and repair equipment aligned on a wooden bench. For fifteen minutes, I deep breathed, bent and stretched and pumped hand weights. My arms were stiff, barely able to control the smallest movement. I'll have to see a doctor I thought, and dismissed the impulse as I felt the moment approach. After countless years, the moment was more than instinctive, it was entrenched in my body.
I gripped the mallet with both hands, loose at the joints, muscles gathered in the upper arms and shoulders.
I am taller than five feet but, over time, I have refined a technique for striking the gong in the confined chamber. Inhaling through my nose, slowly, metered, twirling my wrists two times, lightly, in preparation, I then swing in a measured backward curve parallel to my chest, crouching with bent knees. I lean in towards the target, exhaling as the weight of my hammer takes shape and direction, heading towards the burnished heart of the gong. On impact, the gong's golden drops roll into the air, fusing the tin cube, the gong, the mallet and me.
That moonlit night, I readied for the second whack. Inhale, exhale. As my arms descended into the low arc, following the gravity of the motion, my elbows gave out. And then my hands. The tool turned in my palms and the edge clattered onto the bronze plane of the gong and slipped, screeching down the metal surface, jerking us both to the floor.
Nauseous, breathing faintly, I lifted my gavel for the third time. Erratic in my panic, my body damaged by fear, this had never happened before, I backed into the tin wall, clink clunk. With a broken prayer to the Gods, I repositioned myself in an awkward stance. Omitting the Zen of the moment and drawing in a hasty breath, I lurched into the movement. Pulled into the trajectory of the action, I fell against the gong. It clattered, stuttered, groaning with discord and pain, flat, truncated. It teetered, rocking back, then forward, floundering on the trestles on which it was suspended, creaking, screaming in the small space. I embraced the structure to steady the base, steady myself, my fingers away from the stammering sphere, the matte tones dribbling out, bleeding through the tin walls.
I sit on the floor. Will the sun rise? I am afraid to go outside.
OF THE GONG
In a seamless tin chamber, a bronze gong suspended,
I wake the sun up every morning.
Three notes. No more. No less.
maladroit lately,
with aching arms, a source of tenderness,
I swing the mallet
to the burnished center
rendering golden drops that boom
ringing tin, gong, mallet and I
when my strength fails
on the second note
with elbows labored
the third note, I tumble over
the gong shrieks
in the small space
Will the sun come up?
AND, IN THE MORNING AFTER
Three notes of the gong
raise the vernal sun. Arms sore,
my song fails. Will dawn?
WHEN I MISSED AND THERE WAS NO LIGHT
Oops!
THE END