No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story.
I had been reading Haiku for five years before moving to Japan. Bashō, Issa, Buson…their work hovered in my margins like birds outside a window: elegant, distant, beautiful. I read their poems with reverence, but from a certain remove, as one might admire a bonsai in a museum case.
The way I tend to write is less about beginning with a clear argument and more about paying attention to small moments until they begin to suggest something larger.
Soon the water is at your throat. Now the cool of the water has replaced the warmth of the summer day. A few more steps and you are under. But you can breathe. There is no fear within you as you walk forward and leave behind the steps of the rampart and eventually feel your feet sink into the mud. You can see the waters flowing all around you, and you are able to see what the river brought with it over the centuries. You see barges of grapes from upstream, heading south where they will be churned into wine. You see grain from northern Europe, passing through Hungary, headed for parts south, for larger ships awaiting cargo in the Black Sea.