“keep writing haiku!” on new year card, breath of daffodil
--Sanae Kagaya (Tokyo)

* * *

daffodils
wild kissing
in the springtime breeze
--Tony Williams (Glasgow, Scotland)

* * *

Breathing white...
lucky charm on the satchel
dragon card
--Yutaka Kitajima (Joetsu, Niigata Prefecture)

* * *

far before sunrise
the lightness of being
a robin’s song
--Isabella Kramer (Nienhagen, Germany)

* * *

Sleeping mountains
as they wake up
tiny flowers too
--Murasaki Sagano (Tokyo)

* * *

she set her timer
for the watering
of the winter plum
--Patrick Sweeney (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)

* * *

a beeping
of the dishwasher…
silent spring
--Helga Stania (Ettiswil, Switzerland)

* * *

a garden
full of beatniks
snapdragons
--Stephen J. DeGuire (Los Angeles, California)

* * *

cutting back
the spring snapdragon
a dead heading
--Robin Rich (Brighton, England)

* * *

golden thicket
a wanderer finds
a dragon’s egg
--Malgorzata Tafil-Klawe (Bydgoszcz, Poland)

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

a bit up a bit low
all directions of the world
start with daffodils
--Sanae Kagaya (Tokyo)

The haikuist is a Butoh artist and master of Wakayagi-style Japanese dance, which emphasizes holding a delicate posture and overall elegance. Tsanka Shishkova awoke to this line of bright yellow in Sofia, Bulgaria: a morning fragrant garden full of yellow daffodils

Writing from Los Angeles, California, Aldo Schwartz recommended how to find one’s way around the world.

head west to find east
where mountains peek from the sea
again we shall meet

Satoru Kanematsu traveled westward, away from Nagoya.

New Year’s drive--
from the rear window
bright sunshine

Giuliana Ravaglia followed a dream-like vision in Bologna, Italy. Kramer finished work at dusk.

yellow dragon--
a fleeting glow
shows the way

* * *

after work backlight
these golden lines at the edges
of a dragon’s wings

Red faded to pink as black changed to gray in Sagano’s garden.

Pastel pink roses
after a winter fog
dream colors

Mike Fainzilber saw red in Rehovot, Israel.

red south
fields of tears
windflowers

Shishkova paused for a moment to drop a coin while admiring the season’s first flowers and listening to a rendition of Tchaikovsky’s “April: Snowdrop.”

street artist
in the vintage violin case
fresh snowdrops

Chen Xiaoou found poetry in the streets of Kunming, China.

New Year’s Day
dragons fight lions in
the streets again

Linus Blessing used a thin bow-shaped saw to cut an intricate wood dragon pattern in Berne, Switzerland.

dragon on my desk
cherished holdover
silent fretsaw

A dragon looks “just like a snake in the biblical Garden of Eden,” according to Junko Saeki in Tokyo. Sankara Jayanth Sudanagunta swept his garden in Hyderabad, India.

dragon, snake, Adam
apple, wisdom--
blessing?

* * *

spring cleaning...
with such courage, lizard
you could be a dragon

Angela Giordano’s zodiac sign is aligned with Aries, so she wrote this trailblazing line: a green dragon... this year the goddess of luck assists me

Kathy Watts looks forward to a birthday party in Half Moon Bay, California.

Year of the Dragon
spunky little great-niece
turning twelve

Wilda Morris may have been tempted to crawl on her knees in Bolingbrook, Illinois.

hidden dragons and dinosaurs
my grandsons
stalk the jurassic

Apsara Dilrukshi Perera spotted a bright red tailflower piercing through charred field stubble in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Withering smile
over the clouds
red anthuriums

Yuji Hayashi never had time to wish for a better life in Fukuoka.

before making a resolution
the new year broke Noto
with quakes

T.D. Ginting was of two minds about celebrating the lunar new year in Medan, North Sumatra.

fireworks
filling the air
as the cri(s)es go on

Roberta Beach Jacobson contemplated the end of pollination in Indianola, Iowa.

flying over
an empty lake
last bee

Sharoon Sunny, a member of the Worlds into Words creative writing group, penned this haiku in India. In a soliloquy to master poet Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828), the haikuist Petro C.K. started “the year worrying about the existential threat of our own human activity.”

Trees cut, forests gone
Nature’s symphony silenced
The stage dissolves

* * *

Issa,
the blossoms don’t grow here
any more

John Zheng regrets having been away for so long.

year of the dragon
another twelve years
away from homeland

Paul Batten, a professor of education, was awarded an honorary prize in a haiku contest held at Kagawa University. He was commended by the judge for setting the mood with rain and directly expressing his feelings of envy.

in pairs on lampposts
while driving back in the rain
I envy seagulls

Monica Kakkar awoke to the sound of snow pellets tapping at her windows.

Astaire and Rogers
end my fleeting siesta--
graupel more graupel

Florian Munteanu’s kitchen window was magically embroidered last night.

Glacial morning sun--
a window ikebana
made from ice flowers

Fainzilber witnessed the ephemeral flowering of the beautiful Negev Desert.

blink
and you miss it
desert spring

Flemming Laugaard wrote this one-breath poem in Denmark.

one moment breathing
one long exhale joined the breeze
there was no farewell

Alexander Groth made time for prayer in Neuenkirchen, Germany.

origami dragon
the last thing
she taught me

A sudden spring wind in Rijeka, Croatia, carried away Mihovila Ceperic’s artwork.

open window
origami kites
take off...

Anne-Marie McHarg in London, England, reminds us that fig leaves were added to nude art to protect refined sensibilities during the Renaissance.

Naked trees
No longer chilly
Budding leaves

Kathabela Wilson’s mother, at 96, left her “with strong feelings about the future, and her hopes for peace and real love for one another.”

looking into
the eyes of the dragon
my mother’s advice

Luciana Moretto was enraptured by Igor Stravinsky’s ballet and orchestral concert that disrupted Paris in 1913 when the dancers and music focussed on rhythm and meter rather than harmony.

heathen elation
resonance in crescendo
the Rite of Spring

Mario Massimo Zontini overheard lovers in Parma, Italy. While visiting Lodz Zoo in Poland, Urszula Marciniak suggested we love the one we’re with.

winter at daybreak
a pair of jackdaws chatter
in a wooing mood

* * *

spring at the zoo
the last pair of animals
looks at each other

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The next issues of the Asahi Haikuist Network appear March 2, 15 and 29. Readers are invited to send haiku about love 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).