an old woman’s intuition--the salty taste of Christmas
--Mircea Moldovan (Letca, Romania)

* * *

‘Where have all the flowers gone?’
A girl’s song mingles with the call
of sandhill cranes
--Sheila Barksdale (Gotherington, England)

* * *

deep forest
the low notes
of a nightingale’s song
--Hifsa Ashraf (Rawalpindi, Pakistan)

* * *

from river to sea…
his guitar gently weeps
for falling leaves
--Archie Carlos (St. Louis Park, Minnesota)

* * *

taps
the waterworks
begin to flow
--Curt Linderman (Seattle, Washington)

* * *

The Wailing Wall--
prayers for love and peace
in diverse tones
--Masumi Orihara (Atsugi, Kanagawa)

* * *

deepening snow…
house shrew bustle in the wall
a kind of hello
--Kyle Sullivan (Kaohsiung, Taiwan)

* * *

To a new nest I go
Yet the old one keeps calling
for a cup of tea
--Zamantha Collin Segismar (Misamis Oriental, Philippines)

* * *

a moonbeam
a harmonica tune
winter can wait
--Daniel Birnbaum (La Bouilladisse, France)

* * *

The body’s weak and
Pereat tristitia
does not change a thing
--Horst Ludwig (Seattle, Washington)

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

morning radio
a song of boy loses girl
chores interrupted
--Jennifer Smyth-Davey (Australia)

The haikuist suggested that “Everybody, everywhere can relate to a sad song--a slow melodic lyric usually about love and loss that has the power to stop us in our tracks and make us listen and relive another time.” Listening to a 1969 Elvis Presley tune about “the world turns and a hungry little boy with a runny nose,” Rosemarie Schuldes in Mattsee, Austria, wondered who would throw away snow? Moldovan celebrated the Feast of Saint Nicholas on Dec. 6 in Letca, Romania.

in the ghetto
footprints ending at
a snowy dustbin

* * *

the snowman
he was left without a nose
Christmas in the slum

Barbara Anna Gaiardoni dropped this line in Verona, Italy: morning frost--a kid with a runny nose

Marjorie Pezzoli admits it’s impossible to sing when she gets “that funny feeling at the tip of your nose when your eyes well up and you’re trying not to cry.” Richard L. Matta attended a dress rehearsal in San Diego, California.

nose crinkles
tears in my throat
humming sweet chariot
* * *
someone like you
follows your dry run...
her sparkling ring

Monica Kakkar was attracted to the five melodic syllables of a Japanese song title. Orihara admitted, “Korean dramas are so touching that I can’t help crying, particularly when the young lovers are separated” by a borderline.

Sheherazade…
nightlong Seiji Ozawa
welcoming the stars

* * *

Keenly
Korean lyrics of love
cross the 38th parallel

Tony Williams continues to be haunted by a mournful dirge he overheard in Glasgow, Scotland. Jessica Allyson felt distressed by a bagpiper’s “Flowers of the Forest” while attending a remembrance ceremony for war veterans in Ottawa, Canada.

Autumn funeral
a sad song
from my neighbour’s house

* * *

forest flowers
the piper’s lament
harrows the crowd

Walking past his former high school in Nagoya, Satoru Kanematsu saw a light shining from the teachers’ staffroom.

Sunset glow--
the school chime sounding
“going home”

AI technology has enabled the release of the final Beatles single, “Now and Then,” combining a demo tape by John Lennon with recordings from bandmates. Francoise Maurice referred to it as a sad song in Draguignan, France.

sad song
the autumn crackling
under my steps

There is a song that Ken Sawitri doesn’t want sing in Blora, Indonesia.

orchestrating
a never sing sad song
the sound of December rain

Wai Mei Wong remembered a happy song in Toronto, Ontario.

rustling
the colourful leaves--
harvest song Mom taught me

Likely looking forward to hearing the Beatles swansong, Carlos was touched by the lyrics about an old lady who lived alone and whom McCartney said he got to know very well. Christopher Calvin felt honored to exchange formal greetings with an old woman in Kota Mojokerto, Indonesia.

Eleanor Rigby
dandelion seeds looking
to belong

* * *

ojigi
she humbly bowed
to my handshake

Junko Saeki sang a sad lullaby in Tokyo.

“I won’t be here after the Bon festival,”
rocking the baby having her bottle…
Boston nights

Visiting from Boston, Massachusetts, John Pappas received directions to a temple in Kyoto with a friendly smile.

showing the way
to kinkaku-ji
her gold tooth

David Cox bit into a thinly sliced veal cutlet at a restaurant in at Playa del Carmen, Mexico, that likely had a Mariachi band and dance show.

milanesa--
her strapped shoes
whip the night

John Hawkhead heard a lament carry on down the valley near Bradford-on-Avon, England.

letting out the song
to wind about valley lanes
the widow’s walk home

Thames Ditton, U.K., is sorrowfully wet these days, writes Keith Evetts who lives in a cottage on a quiet old footway, at the end of which is the church and the local pub.

night rain
a passing drunk
sings Danny Boy

C.X. Turner stoked her fireplace in Birmingham, U.K. The woodpile was spent at a rustic hot spring by the time Kanematsu arrived.

winter moon
rising whispers
of wood smoke

* * *

No smoke from
the bathhouse chimney
flitting bats

Birnbaum said he was glad to have a few guests staying under his roof.

moonlight
under the flight of the bat
like its friend

The poet Robert Frost (1874-1963) composed these three final lines of “The Wood-Pile” while walking in a frozen swamp one gray day. He reprinted the full 39-line poem on his annual Christmas card sent to friends, just before he died.

And leave it there far from a useful fireplace
To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the slow smokeless burning of decay

Liz Gibbs lamented that this year in Calgary, Alberta, has been “nothing to sing about” because hazy, ashen skies, heat waves and forest fires only produced a distorted sad song. Andrew Terrell looked back in Australia. Ludwig cheered the year.

ash filled sky
echoes of melancholy
a chickadee changes her tune

* * *

lorikeet screaming
through the morning
too bitter to speak

* * *

Washington Riesling
certainly nothing great--but,
man, not bad either!

Jerome Berglund improvised in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

soap bubble
turning to ice: write
on my arm

Counting beats, Luminita Suse transitioned from a blues tune to a Christmas carol.

erasing the blues
from my footsteps
bright snow

Evetts sent a yearend greeting from Thames Ditton, U.K. The acronym ENSO stands for the El Nino-Southern Oscillation, which the world has suffered through this year. In lowercase it symbolizes the Zen Buddhist circle of life and letting go of expectations.

an enso
in the Christmas snow
El Nino

On a new moon night in Seattle, Washington, petro c.k.’s audience filled with expectation.

ladies and gentlemen,
for my next trick…
disappearing moon

Angela Giordano practiced Zen Buddhist philosophy: meditation... my spirit flies towards the light

Orihara was intrigued by the way Japanese pilgrims walk around the island of Shikoku, whereas Spanish pilgrims walk straight toward a cathedral. She added “if I were ten years younger, I would try both routes” to seek salvation, test her beliefs and find relief.

winter pilgrimage
straight through the continent, or
circle an island

Alan Summers planned a trip as a Christmas reward for having spent a difficult year in Chippenham, England. Robin Rich kissed in Sussex, U.K. Nuri Rosegg hitched a reindeer in Oslo, Norway. Stephen J. DeGuire’s haiku is laden with nuance.

New York crossing
the glitter of wavelets
across the tinsel

* * *

mistletoe hangs
all over the tree
stars around the moon

* * *

sleigh ride
staying behind--old year
and marital life

* * *

family man’s
shopping cart
a pink slip

In icy cold Joetsu, Niigata Prefecture, Yutaka Kitajima’s startling white whiskers made him look like Jack Frost.

Hoarfrost...
an infant frightened
by my brows

Neither tinsel nor decorations were needed for Julia Guzman’s shiny new home in Cordoba, Argentina.

our last day--
no Christmas tree
in the new house

Allyson recalled the aesthetic beauty of caring for living trees in Takamatsu, Kagawa Prefecture. When Kathabela Wilson visits Japan, she says, “it always feels like home” and when she visits her 96-year-old friend’s garden in Pasadena, California, she says it feels like Japan.

castle courtyard
ancient pines shelter
the bonsai show

* * *

bonsai life
like a Japanese Garden
I smooth the stones

Minko Tanev breathed deeply in Sofia, Bulgaria.

snowy planet
at the end of the year
smells of pine

Anna Yin spontaneously reached for a cough drop in Mississauga, Ontario. Justice Joseph Prah in Accra, Ghana, looks forward to the next full moon the day after Christmas.

passing my window
the beaver moon
and someone coughing

* * *

resurrection...
after a moon’s death
next month wakes it

Refika Dedic prayed for a more peaceful world in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

month
over Ukraine
prayer

Wong tried to console someone.

late fall mushrooms--
I basket a full load of
someone’s worries

Bonnie J. Scherer crooned for her offspring in Palmer, Alaska.

don’t know when
but we’ll get together then…
just like me

Williams sliced a dozen portobello in the kitchen and bellowed a few songs down the block in Glasgow, Scotland.

prepping mushrooms…
a year of moons
to come

* * *

Christmas lights
for a while at least
we all sing along

T.D. Ginting tried to interpret a festive musical in Medan, North Sumatra. Wilson listened closely to what fish had to say at a small pond in Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden.

winter song--
lost in
the sub(ti)tle words

* * *

even in English
the watery words
of a Japanese koi

Patrick Sweeney’s cupboards were bare before Christmas in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Kanematsu thought he heard a bell ringing from Horyu temple.

“Do we have a stale bun?”
the refined poverty
of sainthood

* * *

Persimmons--
Shiki’s verse ringing
on my lips

Mike Gallagher puckered up in County Kerry, Ireland.

auld lang syne
this time the parting kiss
for real

Nani Mariani continues to feel her mother’s love in Melbourne, Australia.

the end of the year
a visit to mother’s grave
so she can hear me

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

The next issue of the Asahi Haikuist Network appears Dec. 29. Readers are invited to send haiku on New Year’s postcards 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 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).