Ash-smothered Coals

Ash-smothered coals: and now at last it's hot,
The soup that simmers in the hermit's pot.

Buson

 
fr. A Net of Fireflies
translated by Harod Stewart

 

We had a campfire the other night. I was mesmerized by the glowing coals, as always. What is it about fire that draws us? More than its warmth, is it that it so often means food? And perhaps even music, and stories? 

It came to me that maybe the haiku is like its subject - that the words become a kind of fire in the mind. A few good words, like a few coals, are enough to warm and feed us. Enough to draw us mesmerized and dreamlike around it.