You Take What’s Given

Sometimes the smallest things are what stay with you.

I take the camera and the small notebook when I go out walking. No grand design in it. Just seeing what the day sets down. Light on a wall. A coyote crossing the far field.

City street and strangers with their secrets.

I write a few lines. Not much. Later they end up in the stories and essays though I couldn’t say how. Maybe that’s the work. Maybe that’s the mystery. You take what’s given. You turn it in your hands. Now and then a small truth rises up.

And some of those truths find their way into my books.