Shooting stars--grandson believes in UFO
--Satoru Kanematsu (Nagoya)

* * *

dolled up
the snowwoman winks
at passersby
--Luminita Suse (Ottawa, Canada)

* * *

They neither cry
Nor smile as he leaves…
The lawn gnomes
--Anna Goluba (Warsaw, Poland)

* * *

Old lace, faint lavender
scent from 1968
my mom’s ghost near
--Carl Brennan (North Syracuse, New York)

* * *

holding the urn
holding him
dad’s last wish
--Mona Bedi (Delhi, India)

* * *

home alone
the house sparrow’s
missing chirp
--Hifsa Ashraf (Rawalpindi, Pakistan)

* * *

pink bathtub
I use it on the day before
the house is not mine
--Richa Sharma (Delhi, India)

* * *

so many tourists
in Crescent Lunge pose--
call to midday prayer
--Joshua Gage (Cleveland, Ohio)

* * *

New Year’s Eve
five four three two one
still no winter waltz
--Nuri Rosegg (Oslo, Norway)

* * *

failed haiku
brushed up at yearend
good as new
--Masumi Orihara (Atsugi, Kanagawa)

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

new year turns
crisp, young
kimchi
--David Cox (Beijing, China)

When temperatures fell below zero, the haikuist took his turn at folding cabbage leaves and radishes. He waited as long as he could before digging into the spicy plate of finger food at a yearend gathering.

Much later on
an evening
kimjang fingers

Addison Johnson celebrated good food and song at the yearend in Memphis, Tennessee.

granny’s kitchen
soul food seasoned
in her blues

C.X. Turner readied for guests in Birmingham, U.K.

berry baubles
arranging the hearth
with holly

Murasaki Sagano selected a tantalizingly named drink in Tokyo. Anna Yin, a former poet laureate for Mississauga, Ontario, whisked green tea while contemplating an upcoming trip to Japan. David Brydges, the poet emissary for the Ontario Poetry Society, concocted a delicious haiku.

A cocktail
Between the Sheets
dream in winter

* * *

making matcha tea
a lighter taste of
Tokyo’s night

* * *

ice wine
on northern rocks
drink earth

Eyes aglow, Nazarena Rampini slowly peeled back a silver foil stamped with the Italian name Baci Perugina and opened her mouth to subtly recite: “my days and chocolates as the years go by are short-lived.”

the last chocolate
unwrapped at midnight--
end of the year

Ramona Linke gazed admiringly from her window in Beesenstedt, Germany. Kanematsu yearned for yet another glimpse.

gibbous moon
I hesitate to close
the blinds

* * *

One more time
going out to watch
tonight’s moon

Samo Kreutz pledged this New Year’s resolution in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

last day of December
the promise to myself--
another haiku

After writing a final haiku this year, Xiaoou Chen shut his window in Kunming, China. Mike Gallagher credulously hung a blank page in County Kerry, Ireland. Dejan Ivanovic was reminded to scrub the wallpaper before the yearends in Lazarevac, Serbia. Urszula Marciniak refreshed her calendar in Lodz, Poland.

window open
the last page of the calendar
flutters in cold breeze

* * *

Superstition
the calendar back-to-front
till the new year

* * *

last day of the year
а calendar outline
on the wall

* * *

my night walk
I enter the new year
Unnoticed

Alan Maley leaned into the winter sunshine of Canterbury, U.K.

December sun slants--
my shadow, ten times my length,
stalks me on my walk

Angela Giordano’s apprehensiveness continues in Avigliano, Italy. Yutaka Kitajima picked up a little flower tangled in a tag that read “ultra-cold proof” in Joetsu, Niigata Prefecture.

end of year--
little refugees
still in tents

* * *

Left behind
amid floret pots
year-end sale

Mike Fainzilber contrasted today with an earlier moment of peace in Rehovot, Israel.

year’s end
the glittering white
of summer surf

Michael Buckingham Gray wrote this tribute in Perth, Western Australia, to those who have lost their power.

rattling
in the wind
the old pelican’s wings

Roberta Beach Jacobson suggested a peace rally in Indianola, Iowa.

year’s end…
still a long way to go
peace dove

Fainzilber tried to muster the will to continue.

rallying call
no applause
nervous laughter

Eva Limbach longs for better health in Saarbruecken, Germany. Stoianka Boianova took a long time to rise from her bed this morning in Sofia, Bulgaria. Pitt Buerken suggested that his infinite journey has somehow reached its end in Munster, Germany.

all those places
yet to see
waiting room magazine

* * *

recurring dream
I visit places
from previous lives

* * *

where
the parallels touch
I’ve arrived

Govind Joshi might miss the stroke of midnight at New Year’s in Dehradun, India. Jerome Berglund prayed for heaven to rouse him in time.

wall clock still
the winder
gone

* * *

thunder
wake me
dusty mirror

Teiichi Suzuki cleaned his old home. Vandana Parashar lightened her load in Panchkula, India.

The end of the year
cleaning dust from the Noh mask
silent smile appears

* * *

before the new year
I empty my pockets
of sand

Francoise Maurice shivered alone in Draguignan, France.

separated parents
through the cracks
the passage of the wind

John Pappas cleared snow in Boston, Massachusetts.

the bull moose
shakes off his antlers
the new year

Shizuku Tsukino admits to being “a lazy person” in Tokyo who needs to do something outdoors “before starting to clean up the whole house at the end of the year.”

raking up
a year’s worth of willingness
december cleaning

Berglund checked his to-do list in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Bonnie J. Scherer has been rushing around Palmer, Alaska, before the yearend. A little dusting was on Julia Guzman’s to-do list in Cordoba, Argentina.

frog motel
how much meant to do
got did

* * *

a game of catch me
if you can …
no time

* * *

end of the year--
the unfinished chores
all but forgotten

Suzuki wrote a haiku in homage for the leader of the Senboke Haiku Bird club in Osaka and a frequent contributor to this column, Hidehito Yasui, who passed away at 90 years of age.

December
an empty seat of kukai
dear friend gone

Charles Smith prayed for a friend who passed away in Kyoto.

hospice pond
solitary pebble
ripples

Sharma feted a century. James Penha was hoping to plan something special for his elderly aunt in Bali, Indonesia.

cracking walnuts
together we cross
one hundred years

* * *

born in ’24
my aunt tells me she wants
no centennial

Junko Saeki admitted that her “body has certainly begun the long process of winding down and finally coming to a halt.”

to greet my 100th New Year
the last 15 years of my life, likely
as unforgettable as the first

According to scientists who drilled to the bottom of Crawford Lake, near Toronto, Ontario, there’s a layer of plutonium from nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s. Having wondered whether it was going to be a white Christmas, Jacobson came to this conclusion: s(no)w

Writing from Yangon, Myanmar, Hla Yin Mon decried the global search for water, suggesting that Matsuo Basho would have cried were he alive today. Maley reflexively arched his back in piercing pain.

weeps
seeing the ponds disappear
to climate change

* * *

a whiplash of wind
flays the surface of the lake
this winter solstice

Replicated at research sites around the world, that plutonium layer is a clear marker that the Earth transitioned from the Holocene era to the Anthropocene. Gallagher suggests hope remains for mankind’s future. Patrick Sweeney suggested a strategy for survival that has endured ever since large glaciers melted 400 million years ago.

despite the signs
the old couple still praying
heavenly peace

* * *

silverfish
keeping a low profile
since the Silurian

Hubert Felber seems to suggest we shouldn’t gloomily take nature’s bounty for granted in Teufen, Switzerland.

eating together
empty faces in front of
full plates

Destiny Washington partied in Greenwood, Mississippi.

family cookout--
a full belly belching
in hawaiian punch

Sweeney cocked his head to one side, disbelievingly.

bomber’s moon
the one-eyed crow
stuffs his belly

The Anthropocene signals a new age of declining biodiversity and increasing use of fossil fuels and fertilizer by humans. Dheena Subramanian passed a timeless moment in Fort McMurray, Alberta. Nani Mariani looked heavenward in Melbourne, Australia.

between the end
and the beginning of years
there is no time

* * *

fireworks
decorate the sky
welcoming a new era

Facing the winter sky from his wheelchair in Seattle, Washington, Horst Ludwig believes in a better world.

With the blinking stars
in the big bang’s quietude
quia absurdum

Born during the reign of Emperor Showa that began on Dec. 25, 1926, Kanematsu says he’s now “missing his pals who are far away in the next world.”

Elder’s Day--
Showa Period
long ago

Kohei Saito’s 2020 book “Capital in the Anthropocene,” suggests it is time to embrace degrowth-through-communism because growth-by-capitalism is incapable of solving current demographic and economic problems. Orihara blames humankind’s childish attitude for the worsening climate. She is part of the growing number of Japanese people who are disillusioned with mitigating climate change, distributing wealth and caring for the older population.

El Nino
a new name for our age
Anthropocene

Kanematsu’s family steadfastly stands by their patriarch.

Elder’s Day--
grandson sketches me
young and cool

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

Next year’s issues of the Asahi Haikuist Network will appear Jan. 5 and 19. Readers are invited to send haiku for the new Anthropocene epoch 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).