Shogun--a memory of Japan in my dreams
--Ana Drobot (Bucharest, Romania)

* * *

crow moon
I hang my dreamcatcher
into the wind
--Eva Limbach (Saarbruecken, Germany)

* * *

dreamcatcher
my subconscious
caught on the web
--Jackie Chou (Pico Rivera, California)

* * *

dreamcatcher--
capturing nightmares
and mosquitoes
--Charlotte Bird (Phoenix, Arizona)

* * *

cherry
slowly dying
bonsai
--Christopher Hanlon (Edmonton, Alberta)

* * *

mom’s death anniversary
a robin’s song
at the graveyard
--Rosemarie Schuldes (Mattsee, Austria)

* * *

she cares not
about stories but worms below ground:
the black bird
--Mario Massimo Zontini (Parma, Italy)

* * *

uncoiling
in silent grace
fiddleheads
--Suraja Menon Roychowdhury (Lexington, Massachusetts)

* * *

massage table
the firm grip
of gentle fingers
--Slobodan Pupovac (Zagreb, Croatia)

* * *

snowbells…
one more session
of hypnosis ends
--Richard L. Matta (San Diego, California)

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

archipelago spring--
pine twigs
reach for the light
--Helga Stania (Ettiswil, Switzerland)

The haikuist put on her silk kimono before watching a samurai story about a shogun and the incessant wars that were fought in 16th century Japan. Charlie Smith set his alarm clock forward in Raleigh, North Carolina, then contentedly dozed off into a dream about returning to Japan.

Spring time change
one hour closer
to Japan

Stania stayed awake viewing night blossoms in Ettiswil, Switzerland.

Defying
the darkness
the cherry blossoms

In Tokyo, Murasaki Sagano awoke from a dream that the war was over. She opened her bedroom window wondering if it had only been fake news? She implies that unless we can agree that the sky outside is blue, and the ephemeral blossoms were pink, we will have no chance to sustain peace in this world.

Curtains drawn
real life starts
spring dreams

Horst Ludwig stirred fitfully in his sleep, waking with the thought, “It’s strange how some sentences should stay with you.” Jerome Berglund wishes he could forget some images in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

By now, years ago
it was a dark stormy night...
sitting up in sweat

* * *

snapper’s tongue
--how angry you are
in my dream!

While visiting Osaka castle, Mike Fainzilber viewed an exhibit of an exchange of letters between a shogun on travels and his young son. The child had complained that his servants never put his toys out on time. So, the father wrote back to instruct the head of the palace guard to put them to death and assign new servants. The main reason the haikuist said he remembered this particular exhibit was because of the curator’s note underneath, “And from this we learn that life in feudal Japan was not always easy.” Sagano cried out “ei-ei-oh” then slashed at shrubbery in her garden.

Samurai swords
cut flesh in righteousness
fallen camellias

In Bologna, Italy, Giuliana Ravaglia may have felt some relief by the sight of swaying branches, yet wary of their rough twigs. Radostina Dragostinova cringed in Sofia, Bulgaria.

night panic--
the silent embrace
of my birch

* * *

the crooked branches of the ash tree
sticking up to the grey sky
mom reaches over to hug me

At the sight of blossoming limbs, A.J. Johnson prayed aloud in Stephens City, Virginia.

DC cherry trees
I hope some are spared
from all the cuts

Lilia Racheva Dencheva penned this line in Rousse, Bulgaria: new dreams in the clouds dancing sakura petals

Reaching for the faucet at her mother’s home in India, Roychowdhury quickly recoiled in surprise.

summer heat
a cobra’s hood
over the water tank

Hibernating insects and frogs, snakes and lizards in Bradford, England, knew it is time to awaken, according to Melissa Dennison’s observations. Tipped off by an idea hatched while watching John Blackthorne, the protagonist in the novel “Shogun,” she discovered dormant caterpillars secretly buried amongst leaves in a thorny hedge.

beetles...
wake from their winter slumber
as the sun returns

* * *

amongst
blackthorn branches
an emperor moth hides

Satoru Kanematsu came across an alluring scene taking place in his backyard.

Bright sunshine--
luring buzzing bugs
fatsia blooms

Barrie Levine felt bugged by his interlocutor.

nasty bug…
the new strain
in our conversation

This morning in Croatia, Senka Slivar reportedly “walked over a purple carpet of violets, in my back garden. Just like the one my grandparents had, long time ago.”

first cherry buds--
singing in my garden
the birds and I

Pupovac inspected this poetic line: garden visit onion leaves strictly line-up

Claire Ninham fortified her home in North Yorkshire, U.K.

standing sentinel
astride the front door
flowering rosemary

* * *

spring cleansing…
smudging the house
with sage

Stephen J. DeGuire withstood fires and smoke in Los Angeles, California.

freshly dried
and bundled sage…
devils out

A.D. MacDonald startled the neighbors in New Brunswick, Canada.

sage billows
setting off the fire alarm
indoor baptism

Jennifer Smyth-Davey paused for a moment while busily spring cleaning in Newcastle, Australia. Robert Kania snuggled deep within a comforter in Warsaw, Poland. The images that haiku create in our minds make for the perfect designs on bedding materials. Urszula Marciniak found a way to pass the time in Lodz, Poland.

spring anxiety
will duvets fit new covers
without incident

* * *

the cracking frost--
I cover my illness
with eiderdown

* * *

lingering flu
she counts and recounts the flowers
on the blanket

Mona Bedi regretted staying in bed in Delhi, India: i sleep off a beautiful day hay fever

Moored in Moscow, Russia, Natalia Kuznetsova would rather be sailing.

sneezing fits
keeping me anchored indoors
gusty winds

In Tokyo, Junko Saeki uncontrollably, unexpectedly fell in love.

to fall in love in spring
heavenly, but so inconvenient
c’est la vie

In Los Angeles, California, DeGuire readied his chessmen to fight for the country.

game of chess
sengoku style
art of war

Pippa Phillips identifies as a Haikanarchist in Greensboro, North Carolina.

cherry blossoms on the hill...
waiting for permission
to start the revolution

Chen-ou Liu stood his ground in Ajax, Ontario.

another wave
of bomb threats and yet...
cherry blossoms

Don’t worry, Fainzilber will have your back in Rehovot, Israel.

cherry blossoms
who will watch
the watchers

Francis Attard studied ceremonial samurai suits and swords on display in Oxfordshire, England.

Japanese armour
in Ashmolean museum
less years of warfare

Johnson affirmed the samurai look in Stephens City, Virginia.

chonmage
we bald men agree
it’s back in style

Earl Livings got ready to tell a bedtime story in Melbourne, Australia. Ludwig shut off his television set in Seattle, Washington. Matta lay on his back.

thinning clouds…
dreaming up stories
as stars appear

* * *

I miss the old-time
stars. You know the ones who wore
clothes and had talent
* * *
curtains drawn
his snowflakes turn
to ceiling airplanes

Right before bedtime in Ottawa, Canada, Jessica Allyson was still holding a vacuum in one hand and smartphone in the other. Kanematsu threw beans at his nightmares.
spring cleaning--
tossing virtual beans
at online trolls

* * *

Ogres gone--
beans for hot coffee
peaceful night

Keith Lane poured a hot coffee. Ed Bremson’s roommate joined him at coffeetime in Raleigh, North Carolina. Out for a drive in West Sacramento, California, Lyle Smith recalled the color of his first car.

Whistling kettle
reminding me
warm mornings are brown

* * *

again
the spider joins me
over coffee...

* * *

seventies brown
used Corolla wagon
--my first car

Parker Yang attended a haiku workshop at the National Kaohsiung Normal University in Taiwan.

trumpet flowers bloom…
the first haiku class
all in English

Drobot recalled learning English in Bucharest, Romania. Dennis Owen Frohlich put pen to paper in Catawissa, Pennsylvania.

snowbells...
my first words
in English

* * *

novel writing
a surge of inspiration
cherry blossoms

Sam Gutmann wrote a haiku to contrast the Rockies and the rivers that flow between them, noting, “how reality can be descriptively represented in a map and then the map can be reduced to a diagram.”

diagram
mountains and rivers
alternate

Herb Tate got in the final word in Jersey, U.K.

snowy mountains
all I have to say
I left up there

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

The next issue of the Asahi Haikuist Network appears April 18. Readers are invited to compose haiku for the blossoming springtime. 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).