My throat tightened and my eyes started to burn when I first read Boncho’s (?-1714) haiku: “Piled for burning, brushwood starts to bud.”[1] Suddenly I realized I was in love, again.

Addendum (March 27, 1994)

When I remember that this was written less than ten days after Lauren wrote her note about her painful love for Janina and about how she was missing “seeing and touching” her, I cannot but feel an enormous rage rise in me. My love for Lauren has been sullied for good. Worse, I may never be able to trust a human being enough to fall in love in the same way—without remainder, without a hidden thought.

Footnote

1. Stryk, L., Zen Poetry, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1981 (first published in 1977), p. 119.