Magic.

I tried to give up the way of poetry and stop writing verses.  But each time I did so, a poetic sentiment would tug at my heart and something would flicker in my mind.  Such is the magic spell of the life of poetry.

Basho 

Buddhist teachings and the poetry of Basho train us to search for the essence, the very being, of even the smallest, most common things.  One of the goals of poetry is to penetrate this essence, to grab hold of it in words and pass it on to the reader, so purely that the writer as author disappears.  Only by stepping aside, by relinquishing the importance of being the author, can one capture and transmit the essence -- the very is-ness -- of a thing. 

Jane Reichhold, from BASHO, The Complete Haiku