knowing where the snow melts wild crocus
--Helga Stania (Ettiswil, Switzerland)

* * *

in the field
two white herons melt into
new fallen snow
--Mario Massimo Zontini (Parma, Italy)

* * *

melting snow…
the dragon passes drop by drop
into another land
--Steliana Cristina Voicu (Ploiesti, Romania)

* * *

last week
the mantel filled
with snowfall cards
--Govind Joshi (Dehradun, India)

* * *

Snowman
dreaming to spring
and melting down!
--Florian Munteanu (Constanta, Romania)

* * *

white pine needles
knocking ice
off the seagulls
--Jerome Berglund (Minneapolis, Minnesota)

* * *

Forgotten beauty
of a floating world…
frozen in time
--Anne-Marie McHarg (London, England)

* * *

In sparkling moonlight
shadows too move through the snow,
the crusty snow, slow
--Horst Ludwig (Seattle, Washington)

* * *

green dragon--
in the shadow of the snow
the stone wall
--Giuliana Ravaglia (Bologna, Italy)

* * *

snowy night
dragon fire
fireplace
--Slobodan Pupovac (Zagreb, Croatia)

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

plum blossoms aflame
King Ghidorah has come
for a visit
--Curt Linderman (Seattle, Washington)

The haikuist is a fan of Godzilla, including Ishiro Honda’s 1964 film, “Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster.” The visual effects in the latest movie, “Godzilla Minus One” have been nominated for an Oscar at the March 10 Academy Awards. Donna Fleischer in Bloomfield, Connecticut, is also a die-hard fan of the atomic-heat beam breathing beast rumored to have been created as a result of the testing of American nuclear weapons. Some Godzilla species breathe fire like a dragon. This Year of the Dragon has started off so warm that Mirela Brailean’s ice cream melted in Iasi, Romania.

old woman
sees Gojira’s head--
umeboshi plum

* * *

carousel
a kid shares his ice cream
with a dragon

David Cox squeezed into a purple-colored Beijing subway.

congregation--
line 15 jam packed again
this Sunday

Satoru Kanematsu wept when he listened to a symphony conducted by the renowned Seiji Ozawa (1935-2024) at the Tanglewood concert hall in Boston, Massachusetts. His haiku conjures Matsuo Basho’s hokku: yuku haru ya tori naki uo no me wa namida (Spring is departing birds crying and there are tears in the eyes of fish). Noting that she played the kettledrums, Sherry Reniker was “saddened to hear of a great man’s passing. I met him once by accident on the street in Seijo, a Tokyo suburb.”

Maestro gone--
tears in eyes of fish
birds weeping

* * *

the tympanist
counts rests:
spring rehearsal

Ed Bremson shopped for flowers in Raleigh, North Carolina. John Zheng dallied in Itta Bena, Mississippi.

Valentine’s night...
a man buying roses
at the grocery store

* * *

day after valentine
all candies
50% off

Dripping icicles outside his hospital room in Osaka reminded Teiichi Suzuki it will take time to heal and rehabilitate from a brain injury that caused numbness in his hands.

Winter dawn
in the ward bed
attached to my drip

Anne-Marie McHarg was shocked by the hospitalization of King Charles in London, England.

Dawn stretching--
His majesty stands firm
In sickness and health

Francis Attard wrote this enriched line in Marsa, Malta: frost for ermine on winter scarecrow whiter than usual

Writing from Paris, France, Emil Karla alluded to a scene of medieval romance in Chretien de Troyes’ 1182 verse “Conte du grail” (Story of the Grail), originally penned in Old French.

Perceval contemplating
three drops of blood on the snow...
first day of menstruation

Luminita Suse would prefer to go slower in Ottawa, Ontario. Horst Ludwig took his time shuffling down his apartment in Seattle, Washington.

walking on clouds
if only he
would slow down

* * *

Walking the walker
along the long corridors
dimly neon-lit

Teiichi Suzuki traveled at nightfall to Nankai Namba station at the foot of Mount Koya, the end of the line for commuters on the Nankai train in Osaka Prefecture. Most mornings the station is filled with tourists heading to the Koyasan temples and pilgrimage routes at the World Heritage Site. Daniela Misso can see snow-capped, 2,217-meter-high Mount Terminillo from her balcony in San Gemini, Italy.

Last station
without neon signs
galaxy

* * *

a long kiss
on the balcony…
melting snow

Dennis Frohlich is not sure what to make of the weather vacillating between cold and warm, and fluctuating on a daily basis from sunny to snowy in Catawissa, Pennsylvania.

frigid morning,
burning afternoon
confused, spring begins

Shizuku Tsukino was surprised to see heavy snow falling during a thunderstorm in Tokyo.

the wind is visible
on the second day of spring
heavy snow with thunder

Misso remarked that she really likes this time of year because there is a chance to hear birds at any moment.

nearing spring
I open the car door
to birdsong

Native to Winnetka, Illinois, black-bark willow trees with hanging yellow catkin blossoms are a welcome sight to songbirds and poets, including Charlotte Digregorio.

spring again…
yellow warblers whistle
from my willow

Hunkered down in Lviv, Ukraine, Levko Dovgan enjoyed flipping through colorful magazines and this year’s Farmers’ Almanac.

in my bubble
more and more seed advertisements
spring is coming

John S. Gilbertson has a spading fork and fertilizer at hand in his garden in Greenville, South Carolina. Tsanka Shishkova marveled at the large claws on a furry little garden digger she saw in Sofia, Bulgaria.

joy in spring
for country mouse
planting season

* * *

snowdrops
on a pile of freshly dug earth
mole paws

Biswajit Mishra wrote this haiku while sitting behind a steering wheel in Calgary, Alberta.

wood dragon--
the drive I awaited
for sixty years

Warm spells followed by intermittent cold days have Zontini worrying about this year’s bird migration. Lucia Cardillo frets Mother Nature might go nuts because of the changeable weather. Mona Bedi worried for cattle in Delhi, India.

climate change--
baffles the late cranes
the mild winter

* * *

nature deceived...
in the middle of winter
almond blossoms

* * *

flooded cowshed
a cow nudges her calf
out of the door

The back-and-forth, up-and-down, yo-yo kind of warm and cold weather made Berglund grumble while he warmed his hands, “cold winter-mix asphalt road repairs are not up to par for fixing potholes.”

folding cranes
winter mix
hand tamped

Charlie Smith observed how students kept their hands warm at Osaka University.

entrance exam
Kit Kat wrappers
fill pockets

Cycling through a forest in West Sacramento, California, Lyle Smith remarked, “I think the land is too swampy to actually go in and cut down the trees, so it remains a special natural setting that will withstand any amount of development. I love it.”

abandoned forest
too boggy for clear-cut
--bobcat in twilight

Aldo Schwartz realized the power of focused breathing in Los Angeles, California.

tightrope power lines
the soft smell of clay lingers
above concrete seas

Stania penned this line about her ancestor’s neighbors in Lucerne, Switzerland, who have believed in dragons since a farmer reportedly saw one in 1421: above Lucerne they once suspected a dragon--rocky peaks

Marie Derley shoveled heavy snow for the first time in a decade in Ath, Belgium.

Chinese New Year
when Saint George’s away
the dragon will play

Jennifer Gurney hiked in Denver, Colorado.

slaying my dragons
one day at a time--
New Year’s resolutions

Luciana Moretto broke her new year’s resolution in Italy.

Having aimed high
I emptied my fridge...
then filled an empty one

Arvinder Kaur imagined a Canadian family gathering on a frozen lake to huddle in an ice hut.

ice fishing
sharing warm chestnuts
with loved ones

Shishkova sang while boiling sap to make maple syrup.

songbirds
over the maple tree
sap moon

Mauro Battini awoke to a mouth-watering breakfast in Pisa, Italy.

pancakes and honey--
after the night snow
a fire dragon

Joshua St. Claire had been looking forward to pouring maple syrup on his pancakes at a roadside restaurant in York County, Pennsylvania.

clear-cut
sunset stains
the stumps’ sap

* * *

forgetting my order
the waitress fiddles
with her hemp necklace

Urszula Marciniak might have scribbled down this haiku on a coaster at a popular bar in Lodz, Poland.

the melting ice
the bartender adds his smile
to the drink for her

Kanematsu has always looked forward to broiled squid in the cooler months when extra-large size squid hug the coastlines of Japan. Unfortunately, one of the best squid fishing spots, Ogi Port in Noto, Ishikawa Prefecture, was hit by an earthquake and tsunami wave on New Year’s Day. The haikuist hopes local fishers and foreign interns will take heart when cleaning up the 13-meter long statue built in 2020.

Cheering up
quake-hit fishers’ town
King of Squid

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

The next issues of the Asahi Haikuist Network appear Mar. 15 and 29. Readers are invited to compose haiku inspired by Matsuo Basho’s hokku: yuku haru ya tori naki uo no me wa namida (Spring is departing birds crying and there are tears in the eyes of fish). Send haiku 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).