straw hats on the charter flight--walk in single file

--Krzysztof Kokot (Nowy Targ, Poland)

* * *

on the beach
warming themselves
winter dreams
--Bakhtiyar Amini (Dusseldorf, Germany)

* * *

harvest moon
the sand ebbing away
between my toes
--Mike Gallagher (Lyreacrompane, Ireland)

* * *

tequila sunrise
sangria sunset
swirls of intoxicating beauty
--Liz Gibbs (Calgary, Alberta)

* * *

naked season
empty the bed
next to mine
--Anna Maria Domburg-Sancristoforo (The Hague, Netherlands)

* * *

sparkling sand
a boat disappears
into the sun
--Jay Friedenberg (Riverdale, New York)

* * *

river mist--
winter heading
downriver
--Roberta Beach Jacobson (Indianola, Iowa)

* * *

returning from isolation
the distant waves
from neighbors
--Adjei Agyei-Baah (Kumasi, Ghana)

* * *

rubbing horse liniment
on my swollen ankles
I show my teeth
--Patrick Sweeney (Misawashi, Aomori)

* * *

for no reason
mom gives her son a hug
and a kiss
--Ed Bremson (Raleigh, North Carolina)

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

next to the fireplace--grandmother’s persimmon jam
--Angela Giordano (Avigliano, Italy)

The haikuist is ready for St. Nicholas to slide down the chimney. Her granddaughter played outdoors. Brayden Bennett rubbed his cold nose beside a fireplace in Misawa, Aomori Prefecture. Sue Colpitts has no plan to leave her home in Peterborough, Ontario.

the red nose
of my granddaughter--
winter day

* * *

Scent of wood smoke
blessed
my nose

* * *

Christmas Eve
not a star
in the sky

Aaron Ozment’s old home in the southwest of Japan was designed to let air swirl through during sweltering, steamy summers. Wooden floor slats and sliding paper doors let lizards, mice and insects move about freely all autumn. But he lives alone in winter.

Millipedes, I think
either that or centipedes
What good are landlords?

* * *

The geckos have gone
cold blood cold hearts will prefer
men with heated homes

Bob Friedland shared a Slavic cultural anecdote experienced in Richmond, British Columbia. To this day he’s never gone hungry and has lived a life full of flavor. To render the haiku a perfect 5-7-5 syllables, the second line could be shortened to: Grandmother brought to our home.

Before we moved in,
Grandmother brought bread and salt to our new home.
Coarse rye and coarse salt.

Philmore Place harks back to younger, more peaceful days in Minsk, Belarus. Samo Kreutz added a touch of love to her toast in Ljubljana, Slovenia. A love for the taste of bread spread with lard has been passed down to Zdenka Mlinar in Zagreb.

rejuvenation--
she brewed tea and looks at
her wrinkled hand

* * *

homemade bread
I can almost taste
grandma’s affection

* * *

mother’s smile--
on a warm piece of bread
pork fat

Kanchan Chatterjee fights back tears in the cold winds of Jamshedpur, India. Pippa Phillips heard it through the grapevine in Massachusetts. Isolated, Roberta Beach Jacobson was delighted to receive her first Christmas card in her Indianola, Iowa, mailbox.

dad gone …
winter arrives early
this year

* * *

A warm winter--
the persimmon seeds
told me so

* * *

found
on a Christmas card
snowy trails

As his male lineage always did, Ian Willey let his facial hair grow-in before winter. It is a sign, he said, “of the coming cold as reliable as the brilliant leaves and the sounds of geese high overhead.” Hemapriya Chellappan shared the sidewalk with birds that reside year-round in Pune, India. Stephen J. DeGuire snatched a coat filled with goose feathers when the temperature dipped in Los Angeles. Junko Saeki received a fluffy mohair wrap that she says, “does wonders for me.” Satoru Kanematsu liked what he saw in the mirror.

passing geese
Dad’s beard
is back

* * *

social distancing
a pigeon walks into
my comfort zone

* * *

down jackets
start flying off racks--
autumn ends

* * *

the months-old isolation--
the pink mohair shawl
just to please my senses

* * *

Barbershop
blooming in mirrors
cyclamens

Kanematsu checked to see how well his grandson pruned the pine Christmas trees in the family garden. With mechanical regularity, birds return to winter in Malta with Francis Attard. Yutaka Kitajima was pleased with the results from a medical checkup in Joetsu, Niigata Prefecture.

Pine trimming
son takes over dad’s
autumn chore

* * *

year-end pine tree
woodpecker visited
clockwork

* * *

“Negative”
a fragrant olive
certified

Xiana Jackson shared the uncanny feel of wearing a mask—the sensation was especially unsettling this winter for the 11-year-old student of haiku in English at Sollars Elementary School in Misawa, Aomori Prefecture. In previous years, she enjoyed watching her warm breath freely billow white in the cold. Vasile Moldovan enjoyed watching it snow in Bucharest.

Under my mask
I feel my own
Breath

* * *

On the balcony
through the steam of tea
I look at the snow

Reporting from Cordoba, Argentina, Julia Guzman explained that while “winter brought us a lot of falling snow, it was especially white in Patagonia.” Incisors the size of mountains cut Helga Stania’s night sky in Ettiswil, Switzerland.

sanitizing the streets
tiny rainbows in the water
spread by trucks

* * *

the horizon
white toothed
Blue Moon

Vasile Moldovan wishes he could run about collecting snowflakes on the tip of his tongue in Bucharest, Romania. Stephen J. DeGuire watched nature wash down Los Angeles. Hifsa Ashraf surveyed signs of hardship spreading around Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Milan Rajkumar left a hut behind in Imphal, India.

First snowfall--
my thoughts running
among the flakes

* * *

first snowfall
commingles with ash
from wildfires

* * *

relief camp …
the tiny mounds
of bread and soil

* * *

little snow
as winter sets in
abandoned hut ...

Roberta Beach Jacobson’s year-end circulated endlessly in Indianola, Iowa.

eating candy canes
by the escalator
dead-mall Santa

Angela Giordano found herself in Avigliano, Italy: deep quiet--in my inner silence inspiration.

T.D. Ginting found artistic inspiration in Murakami, Chiba Prefecture. Ana Drobot painted from dusk until dawn in Bucharest, Romania. Junko Saeki remarked how “the skies at daybreak” in Tokyo reminded her “of Michelangelo’s works at the Vatican.” The remarkable way the sun shines from above the clouds lasts for only for a few minutes, but the master caught them on his canvas. The haikuist needed just 17 syllables.

the blank canvas--
the painter is imagining
a p(l)easant face

* * *

red wine--
painting a sunset
or a sunrise

* * *

skies at daybreak
veritable Michelangelo
green persimmons

Kanematsu kept busy until morning light brightened Nagoya. His wife sang “White Christmas” in the seniors’ choir. Murasaki Sagano faced a bitter wind outside a church in Tokyo. Slobodan Pupovac waved farewell from Zagreb.

My fingers
counting syllables
a long night

* * *

At eighty
practicing carols
winter rose

* * *

Winter roses
petal on the wind
to cross me

* * *

morning wind
carries away the last leaf
of the chestnut branch

Steliana Voicu celebrated newfound love in Ploiesti, Romania. Rose Mary Boehm is a writer with both wine and cheese on her table in Lima, Peru.

engaged at a late age--
opening
a red wine bottle

* * *

Grapes, epoisse--
Napoleon knew what he liked
a woman with both

As a respected haikuist, Kanematsu celebrated 25 years of contributing to this column. John Hawkhead rounded out the year with a smile of satisfaction in Bradford on Avon, U.K. Heeding the advice, “out with the old, in with the new,” we look forward to receiving many postcards from all our readers in the New Year.

Having lived
this long with haiku
Elder’s Day

* * *

Tokyo onsen
rising through the steam
an old man’s smile

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next issues of the Asahi Haikuist Network appear Jan. 1, 15, and 29, 2021. Readers are invited to send haiku for New Year’s, the Year of the Ox, or a wolf howling at the cold moon, 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).