The walk and the desk

People ask how long it takes to write a haiku. The walk is an hour. The desk is ten minutes. The waiting is the rest of the day.

What I mean is that the poem doesn’t arrive on the walk. What arrives on the walk is the raw material — a sensation, a juxtaposition, a moment of attention that feels weighted. I note it, sometimes literally, sometimes just carry it. Then the desk is where I find out if it was actually something or just the cold making my mind restless.

Most mornings it was just the cold.

The desk is not romantic. It is where I learn how much of what felt significant at the lake was just the feeling of being awake before the world, which is its own thing but is not always a poem. I throw a lot away. What survives is what I couldn’t simplify any further and still have it mean something.

This morning I walked for an hour and wrote two lines I liked. Yesterday I walked for an hour and wrote nothing I kept. The practice doesn’t promise a return. It just asks you to show up.