Nov 30, 2012

Water pipe
Rapture and allure
Aswan souq
--Teiichi Suzuki (Osaka)

Persistent traders lure the haikuist into their shop on a bustling alley in an Egyptian market. Usually a non-smoker, he puffs on a hookah debating the Rapture, the way believers-in-Christ will be transported to heaven at the end of the world. He went to great lengths to keenly observe and capture a moment in time for his readers. Diana Teneva describes the way religious dancers chase away illnesses and evil with smoke in Haskovo, Bulgaria, on St. Constantin and Helen's Day. Chen-ou Liu drowns in a recurring image. Charlotte Eckert plays contract bridge in Germany. Her single-suited hand of six cards might be all hearts.

Embers
an icon wafting
in the air

A gray hair
in my whisky glass
her floating face

At teatime
the single suiter
in her hand

On a national holiday recognizing distinguished artists and scholars in Japan, Ikken Ikemoto writes a haiku about an imperial decree for modernization. Cezar F. Ciobica salutes a faded singer in Botosani, Romania. Dennis Woolbright celebrates at an award ceremony for haikuists.

Charter Oath
by Emperor Meiji--
Culture Day

Nightingale--
the old soprano looks at
her first poster

Dramatic spotlight
singing to the brightest moon
drinking Kirin beer

Children tend to bring out the best in the way haikuists write about what people feel. Brian Robertson won second prize in the Maple Moon Haiku Contest, held on Culture Day, for a splendid poem about a child entering the moon. Satoru Kanematsu's granddaughter pulls at his heartstrings with her simple gift of love. Tobe Roberts has a mission.

The moon out of reach
a child wades in a pond
full of it

With the note
"for my dear grandpa"
two acorns

A tale has been told
whispered from my grandfather
for me to pass on

Hiroshi Kawane, a medical doctor in Hiroshima, was awarded a prize in the Nov. 3 contest for a happy upbeat haiku about a youthful throbbing heart. Pleased with receiving the cash award, he remarked, "I am going to buy maple syrup and moon cake with the prize." An active haikuist who goes by the pen name Doc Sunday, his haiku make readers think twice. Raj K. Bose remains undecided about the radiation issue facing Japan.

Moonlight tune
through the stethoscope
girl patient

Radium hot spa
no more nuclear power plants
inconsistency

Thoughts of Hiroshima
interrupted by
the microwave beeping

The second round of the coveted Setouchi-Matsuyama Haiku in English and Photo Contest ends Dec. 9. Readers can enter via (https://matsuyamahaiku.sakura.ne.jp/contest/eng/entry/).

In the next haiku, Doc Sunday employs a word coined by Hippocrates that means the dropping off of the bones.

Apoptosis
cold technical term
falling leaves

James Cormack at the University of Aberdeen explains that in Greek it describes the falling of leaves from trees, and when pronounced, the "p" is silent in the root "ptosis." Isao Soematsu is tickled by the sound of the "p" in a word made popular by the Nobel Prize winner Shin Yamanaka at Kyoto University when he successfully produced induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, that have the potential to grow into any type of body tissue. A stem is all that was left of a bright red leaf Neal Woolery picked up on a walk in Iowa. He remarks, "The autumn gold is spent."

'Pluripotent'
new addition to my wordbook
since the prize to iPS

Leaf stem
in my pocket
cold, cold day

Bright red leaves fire up Kiyoshi Fukuzawa. On a cold, crisp night in Montreal, Richard Jodoin keeps his fingers warm inside wool mittens.

Maple leaves . . .
my heart returns to
Quebec blazing

Evening walk
counting syllables
leaves rustle

Want to try composing haiku ?

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The next issues of the Asahi Haikuist Network appear Dec. 7 and 21. Readers are invited to send haiku about the end of this year on a postcard to David McMurray at the International University of Kagoshima, Sakanoue 8-34-1, Kagoshima, 891-0197, Japan, or by e-mail to (mcmurray@fka.att.ne.jp).