wild sensitivity of the air … fresh snow
--Pere Risteski (North Macedonia)

* * *

in the valley
carved by a glacier
this morning’s snow
--Ruth Mittelholtz (Walkerton, Ontario)

* * *

no wind
an owl lifts off
the snowy marsh
--Kristen Lindquist (Camden, Maine)

* * *

neighbours in the snow
a woman chased the white owl
from the snowman’s nose
--Germina Melius (Castries, Saint Lucia)

* * *

Arctic sunrise--
the wavy blue silence
of the snow
--Origa (Lansing, Michigan)

* * *

blue cranes
dreaming myself
back to the sea
--Isabella Kramer (Nienhagen, Germany)

* * *

Free cup of sake
served to new year visitors
a shrine in the woods
--Kiyoshi Fukuzawa (Tokyo)

* * *

Confinement of the tiger
quarantine in a cramped
hotel room
--Dejan Ivanovic (Lazarevac, Serbia)

* * *

Winter isolation
sharing hot kisses
my lips your coffee cup
--Justice Joseph Prah (Accra, Ghana)

* * *

wild beaches
the waves kiss the memories
of the stone
--Ljiljana Dobra (Sibenik, Croatia)

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

snow...
the magic we expect
at any age
--Ana Drobot (Bucharest, Romania)

Living in one of the snowiest areas of her homeland, the haikuist was nonetheless delighted by what she saw outside the window this winter morning. Joan McNerney loved the sensation of eating fresh snow in Ravena, New York. Snow crystals made Amin Jack Pedziwiater sneeze in Rzeszow, Poland.

Thick snowflakes…
tonguefuls we lap laughing
as sparks pinch my face

* * *

almost frost
soft snowflakes
on an itchy nose

Ignatius Fay drank snow in Sudbury, Ontario. Nudurupati Nagasri playfully skipped lunch in Hyderabad, India. Kathleen Vasek Trocmet hunkered down until a snowstorm passed by New Braunfels, Texas. In Tokyo, Murasaki Sagano seasoned her porridge with fresh leaves of Shepherd’s purse, cudweed, chickweed, henbit, turnip, parsley and radish. John R. Parsons hints at eating springtime fresh bamboo shoots in Northampton, England.

melting snow
for campfire tea
the pot’s black bottom

* * *

first snowfall
forgetting
the hot soup

* * *

deep in a blizzard…
bouillabaisse steams
in a clay pot

* * *

Diffused sunlight
on the bowl of rice gruel
with seven herbs

* * *

light snow floats
to barely feather
tips of bamboo

Nika misses his neighbor in Calgary, Alberta. Hifsa Ashraf grabbed what last memories she could from Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Pippa Phillips couldn’t grasp more than her fair share of life from the icy depths of Lake Saint Louis, Missouri.

snow drifts
across the road
farm for sale

* * *

moving day
a fist full
of snowflakes

* * *

deep winter...
frozen under ice
time

Marie Derley pondered the meaning of nothingness in Brussels, Belgium. Salil Chaturvedi religiously dusted in Goa, India. Erin Castaldi shook off a pattern in life that had kept repeating in Mays Landing, New Jersey.

New Year’s Eve
every year we say
we’ll do nothing

* * *

new year’s day
cleaning the dust settled
on Buddha

* * *

fresh snow
passing along his
karmic debt

Melanie Vance rescheduled her holidays in Dallas, Texas. Padraig O’Morain worried for a woman in Dublin, Ireland. Joanne van Helvoort and her dad felt a little tired the day after celebrating “late with a little too much wine” in The Netherlands. Samo Kreutz awoke to a familiar sound in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

renaming
the work schedule as happy hour
wine colored wallpaper

* * *

she stands at the bus stop
in January dark
wearing sunglasses

* * *

New Year’s concert
daddy snores
out of sync

* * *

New Year
no different as before
his snoring

Satoru Kanematsu pulled down a woolen skullcap in Nagoya. Mark Gilbert finessed a tender-hearted haiku in Nottingham, England. Archie Carlos pulled up a pair of new warm woolies in St. Louis Park, Minnesota.

Chilly blast--
the cap mom knitted
warm and tight

* * *

the warmth
of a lambswool blanket
finesse as a verb

* * *

yeah, fresh snow
wielding a shovel
in Beatles socks

John Hamley was inspired by his hard-working mother’s love for the Russian forests that stretch between the taiga to the north and the mountains to the south. Happy with her home in Bucharest, Romania, Mona Iordan read poetry by Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828).

Vast are
the steppes of Siberia
Sonya alone shovels snow

* * *

snowbound
reading Issa’s haiku
by the window

The master poet wrote this poem in 1812 when he moved back to his hometown of Kashiwabara (present-day Shinano, Nagano Prefecture): Kore ga maa tsui no sumika ka yuki gojo.

Well, this is my place
a final home with snow piled
over a meter

Nani Mariani stayed put in Melbourne, Australia. Francoise Maurice skipped off Draguignan, France. Fukuzawa began a lonelier year.

Christmas holidays
but I’m still here
in the middle of nowhere

* * *

the year ends
I navigate skipping
towards another elsewhere

* * *

A dear friend and I
for the first time New Year’s Eve
in different worlds

Robin Rich recited a Scottish poem by Robert Burns while department store staff bowed to him courteously.

auld lang syne
closing the shop doors
in Tokyo

Goran Gatalica anticipated the mischief that the winter wind would do in Zagreb, Croatia.

calm evening--
in the treetop of a large pine
fresh snow

Maurice looked up: Then she got blanketed by snow.

first day of the year
lit by the dawn
the top of the pines

* * *

new balance
the sound of snow falling
from the tree

J.L. Huffman carved a resolution in Wilkesboro, North Carolina.

the New Year dawns
time to undress the tree
make amends

Anne-Marie McHarg from the British Isles and Subir Ningthouja from India were absorbed by a deafening silence.

Snow falling
Silence within silence
Island seclusion

* * *

stillness...
chirps of a cricket
flow into the walls

Vladislav Hristov clasped his hands warmly in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Chilled to the bone at a dental clinic in Nagoya, Kanematsu dropped his medicine tablets onto the floor.

first snow
the mantis offers
her last prayer

* * *

Poignant chill--
toothache pills spill from
trembling hands

Vance knows that snowflakes have different shapes, and Jay Friedenberg noted that difference affects how they float. Gatalica felt they followed a regular repeated pattern of movement. Luminita Suse wrote a poem and painted a picture for the “DailyHaiga” journal about a spot where she saw snowflakes land.

her son’s
water colored snowflakes
all alike

* * *

each one
falling differently...
snowflakes

* * *

the New Year
a comfortable rhythm
of first snowflakes

* * *

Snowflakes
falling into place
holy night

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

The next issues of the Asahi Haikuist Network appear Feb. 4 and 18. Readers are invited to send haiku for the Winter Olympics or white tigers on a postcard to David McMurray at the International University of Kagoshima, Sakanoue 8-34-1, Kagoshima, 891-0197, Japan, or 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).