snow drifting apart from one another
--Lafcadio (Chattanooga, Tennessee)

* * *

evening snow
one by one she packs
the bare branches
--Xenia Tran (Nairn, Scotland)

* * *

must be in humankind
one memory that knows
snows as far as time
--John G. Gilbertson (Greenville, South Carolina)

* * *

memories--
cleaning
the gar(b)age
--T.D. Ginting (Murakami, Chiba)

* * *

menacing floods
finger tracing roads in town
through memory
--Hla Yin Mon (Yangon, Myanmar)

* * *

melancholy…
a dozen seal hunters
floated out to sea
--Goran Gatalica (Zagreb, Croatia)

* * *

tapping along
the old familiar byways
dad’s cane now mine
--Mike Gallagher (Ballyduff, Ireland)

* * *

winter fire:
under the night sky,
memories
--Rimi Nath (Shillong, India)

* * *

crimson skies
at sunset--
my prayer
--Maire Morrissey Cummins (Glengarriff, Ireland)

* * *

wild geese in flight
part of a script quoted
picked to plagiarize
--Francis Attard (Marsa, Malta)

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

Snow globe
the closest I get
to Mt. Fuji
--Kimberly A. Horning (Jacksonville, Florida)

Today’s column is about our dreams and childhood memories of snow. The haikuist keeps a souvenir by her bedside: A small water-filled glass sphere containing a miniaturized scene of Japan. Before going to sleep she turned it upside down so that the plastic white particles it holds created an ethereal scene of sparkling snow. She might be lucky enough to dream of seeing a magical mountain capped in snow on New Year’s Eve.

David Toohey can see mountains, but they are not always snow-covered where he lives in Yokkaichi, Mie Prefecture.

Creaking branches overhead
Wet snow falling off rooftops
Yearns for cold mountains

Elancharan Gunasekaran pouted that it never snows in Singapore. Jerome Berglund knows snowfall is on the cards for Minnesota everyday through the holidays.

you better not cry
mostly tears and rain
in December

* * *

any plans you had
cancel them
snow on the docket

Rob Scott has a backlog of lots of tasks to catch up with in Melbourne, Australia.

snowbound
a whole week
on my desk

Sergio DeMiglio felt carefree once he stepped down from teaching as department head of religion at Brebeuf High School in North York, Ontario.

time to think
memories surround
retirement

Jessica Allyson shared a memorable ditty she heard “dominating the radio stations here in Ottawa, Canada.”

half-heard tune--
muscle memory
invoked

Padraig O’Morain awoke to a surprising sight in Dublin, Ireland. Cezar Ciobica’s mother called the family to the kitchen window in Botosani, Romania.

a flood in our farmyard
we looked in surprise
that one morning

* * *

first snowflakes
mom stops powdering
her cakes

Despite a mountaintop vantage in Ettiswil, Switzerland, Helga Stania lost her line of sight to a meteor shower: the snowfall ends the Geminids.

Of all the bright planetary nebulae shining in the heavens above Sofia, Bulgaria, Tsanka Shishkova fixated on the Helix Nebula, which is often referred to as the Eye of God.

New Year’s Eve
sparkling wine for the next step
along the space helix

Keith Evetts will celebrate the incoming New Year in Thames Ditton, U.K.

champagne bubbles
looking at you
through a clear glass

Rob Scott suggested another label to wind down this year, and perhaps ordered something different than champagne in Melbourne, Australia. Lafcadio ordered from the menu.

another wine...
something good
must come of this

* * *

first snow--
tom gha kai soup
and spring rolls

Andy McLellan poured a generous measure of his favorite spirit when snow fell outside his home in Canterbury, England.

winter deepens
an old shot glass
filled with whiskey

Angela Giordano snuggled into a warm home in Avigliano, Italy. Slobodan Pupovac knows where snow goes at night in Zagreb, Croatia.

old ruins--
a country mouse
makes his home

* * *

Twilight
the snowflakes are drawn
into the mouse hole

Daipayan Nair took good care of family in Silchar, India.

after bath
mustard oil trickles
down grandpa’s ear

Kimberly Kuchar misses her mother-in-law in Austin, Texas. Mirela Brailean misses her father in Romania.

sting from hot oil--
how come she never needed
to turn down the fire?

* * *

truck driver
I miss the oil smell
of dad’s embrace

Giuliana Ravaglia remembered the gentleness of her father’s caress in Bologna, Italy.

light snow...
last caress
my father’s

Carl Brennan echoed the rasping sound of his father’s tickly throat in North Syracuse, New York.

A dry cough
starts around midnight
my dad’s ghost

Jenna Le shared a quiet moment with a newborn in Ardsley, New York.

pumping breast milk
white droplets writhe free
the late year’s ghosts

Shishkova warmed up an otherwise cold day by writing this line in Sofia, Bulgaria: cup of hot chocolate recalls days before the war. She recalled her grandfather’s stories and dashing through the snow.

quiet snowfall
grandpa recounts adventures
from his youth

* * *

white silence
before moonrise
sleigh bells

Giordano recalled when the Italian Alps were always snow-covered.

only memories
the snowy mountains--
mild winter

Horst Ludwig reminisced sitting at home by the kitchen window during a long winter as a little boy in a small village in the historical region of Silesia. His mother told him fascinating stories about passersby, once pointing out “that those little wagons, drawn by only one little horse” belonged to free-spirited nomads who traveled across Europe.

Thin dancing snowflakes
a small gypsy caravan
outside, on the road

Tomislav Maretic couldn’t look away in Zagreb, Croatia.

ripening grain--
a hare runs frightened
by the train

Recalling yesteryears, Evetts composed two haiku referring to long, low sounds of suffering.

grandchildren spellbound
by the old folk’s tales
when there were whales

* * *

alone at sea
the moan of a whale
at the moon

Gunasekaran ended this year in harmony.

groans and grunts
whistles and whoops
whale song

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Readers are reminded to enter the 12th Setouchi-Matsuyama International Photo-Haiku Contest before Jan. 11 at this online site: https://matsuyamahaiku.jp/contest/theme_eng02/

* * *

The next issues of the Asahi Haikuist Network appear on Jan. 6 and 20. Readers are invited to send haiku for the new Year of the Rabbit 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 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 The International University of Kagoshima, 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: “Teaching and Learning Haiku in English” (2022); “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).