Grasshopper, in spring
Arises like the Phoenix.
In fall, harvested.
—Sho-sa Saburo Atsuda 2925
Some trivia about this haiku: I wrote this purely as a joke and put it an email while we were discussing the layout of the book. DAK, our layout guy, threw it in as a lark, and John, our fiction director, loved it because, joke aside, it encapsulated the theme of the collection so well, so we rolled with it.
Some more trivia:
—My working title of "One Man's Trash" was "The S-Word" (meaning "salvage"; get your heads out of the gutter! ;) ).
—The main character in the epilogue is loosely based on one of my brothers-in-law, who joined the USMC after his uncle, a Catholic priest, suggested he join the military after high school.
Anyway, glad to see you all have liked this book so much!