Now dark is falling, and you are nowhere near anything you recognize. At times you catch glimpses of Asama-yama through the trees, each time in an unexpected direction. You grow frustrated, you curse the hand-drawn map you made this morning. Anger drops you into sadness, and sadness into that slow sinking that you have never learned to pull yourself out of.
The smell of woods smoke - / black dirt freshly turned over / in a cabbage field
Japanese do not see 火山 and think fire mountain. They see volcano. The ideas have dissolved into the words they construct, the fires and mountains that were already old, long before anyone thought of writing them down.
All language is poetry, says Emerson.
The name of a word is not the same as the word itself.
You are volcano man? Satoshi asks. Yes, no. Poetry man. You are like haiku? Yes, very much. I think, Tomoko says very seriously, I think haiku have full of Japanese mind.
With the first frost
the blueberry
becomes sweet
You want to express how welcome you have felt here, how grateful to have a place to get out of the cold and the wind, a place of patience and kindness.