Truffe de Bourgogne picked a la carte with breakfast Place de la Concorde

--Francis Attard (Marsa, Malta)

* * *

tangled roots
unearthing great grandmother’s
secret
--Sue Colpitts (Peterborough, Ontario)

* * *

chocolate truffle--
layers and layers
of gran’s love
--Arvinder Kaur (Chandigarh, India)

* * *

secret diary--
the part of my daughter
that I will never know
--Angela Giordano (Avigliano, Italy)

* * *

Each picture
vestiges of my youth
rose mallows
--Murasaki Sagano (Tokyo)

* * *

insomnia...
old skeletons whispering
in the cupboard
--Natalia Kuznetsova (Moscow)

* * *

chilly night
the shadow of magnolia leaves tapping
at the bare window
--Ken Sawitri (Blora, Indonesia)

* * *

Storm
ghosts of felled trees
groan and weep
--Tsanka Shishkova (Sofia, Bulgaria)

* * *

heat disbursing breeze
coolly transports increasing
cravings for truffles
--Paul Faust (Ashiya, Hyogo)

* * *

Her lips
are so sweet today--
black truffles
--Vasile Moldovan (Bucharest, Romania)

------------------------------
FROM THE NOTEBOOK
------------------------------

Truffles, I am reading,
a little goes a long way--
well, hasn’t mine, though
--Horst Ludwig (St. Peter, Minnesota)

Reading in bed to learn what all the fuss is about, the haikuist claimed that he has “seen a lot in 84 years, but never truffles.” Eva Limbach has only dreamed of the delightful odor of shaved truffles at home in Germany.

clearing out
the brand-new truffle slicer
unused

A job well done, Rashmi VeSa settled in for an umami-flavored treat in Bengaluru, India. Murasaki Sagano invited her friends to a BYOB, “bring your own bowl,” party in Tokyo. Guliz Mutlu’s friends looked their best until the party ended at dawn in Ankara, Turkey. Luisa Santoro dressed in black to stay up all night in Rome.

truffle shavings
the stinging savouriness
of my send-off meal

* * *

A party
boiled rice with mushrooms
another bowl

* * *

Colette’s haircut
truffles wine cheese music
daybreak

* * *

Total black look
and mood
White nights...

Barbara Mackay savored a moment of winter in Spain. Sipping wine in Dusseldorf,　Germany, Bakhtiyar Amini hopes it will have a robust, round and very rich feel. Yutaka Kitajima nodded in approval of the uncorked bountiful flavor in the glass he was poured in Joetsu, Niigata Prefecture. Relieved to depart Saudi Arabia, Bob Lucky exclaimed, “Home at last in Portugal,” where he “is working his way through all the regional cheeses and wines.” Writing from Annapolis, Maryland, B.A. France questions the significance of soil, topography and climate.

I hold in my mouth
a sip of fine dry sherry
wintering in Spain

* * *

first kiss
I wonder how many caudals
this wine has

* * *

To the brim
a full-bodied wine--
in favor

* * *

another bottle…
the stink of the cheese
grows on me

* * *

sensing the terroir...
unspoken truth
of home

Francis Attard brought a souvenir home to Malta. Paul Geiger paid dearly for his food fetish in California. Bakhtiyar Amini is still saving up in Tajikistan. Stephen J. DeGuire relied on a restaurant to select the best tuber in Los Angeles. Slobodan Pupovac put two hunter-gatherers to work in Zagreb.

a box of truffles
to surprise the landlady
gift on my return

* * *

no trifle
one twenty a pop this
California black truffle

* * *

white truffles
the day I make
my first million

* * *

3 star chef
sniffing truffles for
hints of pork

* * *

yellowed forest
dog and pig in the race
for truffles

Anne-Marie McHarg followed hunting dogs into an English forest. Serhiy Shpychenko hunted in Kyiv, Ukraine. In Zagreb, Zdenka Mlinar asked her neighbor to put on a leash. Palle Krishna Rao’s dog started to wag its tail uncontrollably in Chennai, India. Yutaka Kitajima’s dog settled in for the night at the foot of a mountain near Joetsu, Niigata Prefecture.

Earthly aroma
Deep inside woodlands
Truffles bloom

* * *

dog walk
the autumn forest
smells of truffles

* * *

truffle hunter
sniffs my garden--
neighbor’s dog

* * *

getting excited
about gluten free bread
our dog, Riga

* * *

Evening glow
the shepherd dog views
crescent moon

Pupovac uncovered earthnuts before the ground froze. Vasile Moldovan found the delectable treat under a Christmas tree in Bucharest, Romania. Teiichi Suzuki refers to truffles as pine mushrooms, a delicacy that used to be easy to find near Eheiji monastery in Fukui Prefecture.

the first snow
the white truffle snuggles
the oak root

* * *

After the rain
under a secular
first truffles

* * *

By its scent
feeling the taste of
pine mushroom

Louise Hopewell’s taste buds followed scent and sound in Melbourne, Australia. Patrick Sweeney likes it hot and spicy in Misawa, Aomori Prefecture.

waking to the scent
of fresh-baked bread
birdsong

* * *

I snuck a hot pepper
into her beans
this old wife of mine

Zdenka Mlinar hunted for her childhood. Armed with a small curved knife, Neelam Dadhwal found what she was looking for in Chandigarh, India. Angela Giordano sat down beside a tree trunk in Avigliano, Italy. On a trek to the woodlands outside London, Anne-Marie McHarg found wildlife running about preparing for winter.

picking mushrooms
in the childhood forest--
forgotten pathways

* * *

serpette in my satchel
mushrooms growing
around wild oak

* * *

dear old oak
listens to my thoughts
hidden from others

* * *

Bushy tailed squirrels
Clutching nuts dig here and there
In secret places

Startled by her customers, Maya Daneva was relieved with an order for confectionary in the Netherlands. Satisfied, Samo Kreutz hurriedly said “that’s all” from Ljubljana, Slovenia.

in the chocolate store
two black masks order a box
of white truffles

* * *

chocolate truffles
reaching for the last one
me and the sunshine

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Sweet dreams at http://www.asahi.com/ajw/special/haiku/ The next issue of the Asahi Haikuist Network appears Nov. 20. Readers are invited to send haiku about candy on a postcard to David McMurray at the International University of Kagoshima, Sakanoue 8-34-1, Kagoshima, 891-0197, Japan, or by e-mail to (mcmurray@fka.att.ne.jp).

* * *

David McMurray has been writing the Asahi Haikuist Network column since April 1995, first for the Asahi Evening News. He is on the editorial board of the Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku, columnist for the Haiku International Association, and is editor of Teaching Assistance, a column featuring graduate students in The Language Teacher of the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT).

McMurray is professor of intercultural studies at The International University of Kagoshima where he lectures on international haiku. At the Graduate School he supervises students who research haiku. He is a correspondent school teacher of Haiku in English for the Asahi Culture Center in Tokyo.

McMurray judges haiku contests organized by Ito En Oi Ocha, Asahi Culture Center, Matsuyama City, Polish Haiku Association, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Seinan Jo Gakuin University, and Only One Tree.

McMurray's award-winning books include: "Only One Tree Haiku, Music & Metaphor" (2015); "Canada Project Collected Essays & Poems" Vols. 1-8 (2013); and "Haiku in English as a Japanese Language" (2003).