to be a rebel her full back dragon tattoo
--Eva Limbach (Saarbruecken, Germany)

* * *

in our seventies
my pet dragon and I
still share one name
--Maxianne Berger (Montreal, Quebec)

* * *

extra glue
sealing her last will
the milky way
--Richa Sharma (Delhi, India)

* * *

grandmother
a leafless oak tress
stands firm in the yard
--Destiny Washington (Greenwood, Mississippi)

* * *

fire in the rubble
the olive harvest
a very poor year
--Mike Fainzilber (Rehovot, Israel)

* * *

traffic lights
behind the idling engines
burning eyes
--Govind Joshi (Dehradun, India)

* * *

shallow murmurs...
discussing the steady flow
of our work
--C.X. Turner (Birmingham, England)

* * *

an old man watches the sea--
a newspaper
wet with rain
--Malcolm MacClancy (Greenore, Ireland)

* * *

Water waves
Golden sky dancing
Underwater
--Shakhawat Tipu (Dhaka, Bangladesh)

* * *

Year marches
as a ghost
thru shadows
--John S. Gilbertson (Greenville, South Carolina)

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

I shell peas
just as the ancient Greeks
shelled peas
--Keith Evetts (Thames Ditton, England)

The haikuist readied for the popular custom of scattering soybeans while shouting “oni wa soto” (out with the devil) to exorcize evil and pray for health and good fortune on Feb. 2, setsubun (the day before the beginning of spring on Japan’s traditional calendar).

Slobodan Pupovac threw his slipper at a bloodsucking beast in Zagreb, Croatia.

winter night
the sound of a mosquito
in my room

A fierce winter wind grated roughly and noisily on the bare pavement outside Teiichi Suzuki’s room at Kansai Electric Power Hospital in Osaka, leaving him to wonder “from where it comes and to where it goes.”

Kogarashi
could it be
the sound of earth’s rotation

Xenia Tran is counting down to the Feb. 9 end of the Year of the Rabbit. Jessica Allyson watched a hare run for the hills in Ottawa, Canada.

time to go...
flying on a hare’s back
to another world

* * *

year closes
the rabbit retreats
past the treeline

Murasaki Sagano warmly snuggled into her Tokyo bed.

Sleeping mountains
folded in
fur clouds

Jerome Berglund awoke with a fright in the middle of the night in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

closing in:
all of the
red pillows!

Fernanda Binati traveled to Dharamshala in the Himalayas to watch the sunrise. Remarking how “it’s a lively city, immersed in Tibetan culture and Tibetan Buddhism, since it has received many refugees over the years, including the Dalai Lama,” she painted this serene view of nature.

Colors intertwine
On the Earth’s sky
Blooming as the sunrise

Writing from Nottingham, England, Mark Gilbert warily suggested “in this epoch, science will no longer be allowed to be objective.”

rose-tinted glasses
show only
the good news

Eleonore Nickolay is worried about a new type of snow covering France in the age of Anthropocene.

modern winter tale
on the roofs of my town
industrial snow

Florian Munteanu shivered in Bucharest, Romania.

Sunset fire sky
Snowing--a year and a day--
Arctic hope and stay...

Alan Maley pleaded to a roommate in Canterbury, U.K.

winter ladybird
taking refuge in my room--
don’t fly away home

From his new abode in Pittsburgh, Patrick Sweeney viewed a panorama of fields in spring spreading below the hills of Pennsylvania, declaring them “a haiku poet’s dream” and made a list of wildlife he’s seen so far this year: wild turkeys, bobcats, groundhogs, eastern cottontails, deer, and “my first Baltimore oriole!”

sunset
the white crane
returns fire

The incoming Year of the Dragon starts Feb. 10. Sharma might be out of town for a few days.

in another town
my friend needs help with
fairy lights

David Cox visited the monastery of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism in Beijing.

lama temple…
monk passes him an apple
from the altar

Tsanka Shishkova plans to fly a kite with a long tail to celebrate New Year’s Day: dragon with an olive branch... my new kite

The Chinese Lantern Festival will be celebrated when the full moon rises on Feb. 24. Mircea Moldovan wrote this timeline in Letca, Romania: balanced between two years--full moon dragon

Berglund gripped the railing on the way down in icy Twin Cities, Minnesota. The Chinatown in Ottawa, Canada, is a multicultural neighborhood to Marilyn Henighan. Hla Yin Mon watched a dragon dance in Yangon, Myanmar.

red lantern
in sunken stairwell
two doors down

* * *

red dragons
greeting us every day
Chinatown

* * *

spring festival
in the streets of chinatown
humans inside dragons

Neni Rusliana picked a perfect present in Bandung, Indonesia. Nuri Rosegg regrets not having shopped for a trendy present before inflation hit Oslo, Norway. Pamela A. Babusci understood a father’s frustration in Rochester, New York.

wood carving
the birth gift
of a baby dragon

* * *

wood dragon
a piece of art
price takes off

* * *

year of the dragon
he craves a wooden one
for his little son

John Hawkhead puffed a magic dragon in Bradford on Avon, England.

journey’s end
grandpa’s pipe releases
an old grey dragon

It turned out to be a red-letter day for Bette Hopper in Lufkin, Texas.

a red envelope
from grandfather
wood dragon

Sue Colpitts was mesmerized by a fiery red sunset in Peterborough, Ontario. A tattoo caught Francis Attard’s eye in Marsa, Malta.

setting sun
fire dragon’s mouth
wide open

* * *

on the dancing floor
dragon tattoo says it all
given the cold shoulder

Celebrating the return of the dragon after 60 years, Munteanu lamented the loss of the rainforest.

Born in the forest
where matches start fires
trees become ash... all

Arvinder Kaur lit candles in Chandigarh, India. Ana Drobot’s apartment in Bucharest, Romania, feels as warm as a hot-steamed bun.

stream rises
from the dumpling basket
candlelight dinner

* * *

pet dragon--
my electric heating
system

Kavita Ratna built a bonfire in Bangalore.

rearranging regrets
into neat piles
bright bonfire

Jackie Chou fed a fire in Pico Rivera, California. Archie Carlos needed to keep his family warm in St. Louis Park, Minnesota.

avoiding its wrath
I feed the paper dragon
a red envelope

* * *

winter wood pile
I split
my son’s toy dragon

Giuliana Ravaglia felt the warmth of light in Bologna, Italy. In Croatia, Gordana Kurtovic prayed for the end of wars. The lighting of lanterns marks the end of new year celebrations and signals when decorations should be taken down. Tomislav Maretic took down his Christmas tree, remarking, “I really liked the time before the tree was decorated… the fresh smell of the forest in the room!”

a lighted lamp--
between your bare hands
I gather hope

* * *

the flame of hope
cessation of wars
in the New Year

* * *

decorations in the box--
fragrance of the fir-tree spreads
from the room’s corner

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

The next issue of the Asahi Haikuist Network appears Feb. 16. Readers are invited to send haiku for spring 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).