MITSUAKI KOJIMA

　A cool spring kept the Japanese cherries in bud. Followed-up by a sudden warm front though, poets had to move fast to observe the pink trees and people celebrating hanami parties. Note how the haiku submitted by Marie Shimane and Michael Fessler were pared to essential ephemeral images. Ella Rutledge placed herself inside the next poem she experienced at Zenpukuji park in Suginami. The final word creates her autobiography. She molded the haiku into a 4-7-5 syllable structure and added punctuation for lingering effect. Unfortunately for Tatsuko Toshima it rained in Aomori.

On the bench sits
another old grandmother
writing haiku, too.

Rain all day
lottery stand woman
dozes

　Kyoto poet Murasaki Sagano loves the smell of fresh reeds. She wrote this poem while strolling in her neighborhood. Many people who move into new dwellings look forward to fresh tatami mats.

Tatami
spread in the spring night
its fresh smell

　Cedar pollen is on the mind of Hidehito Yasui in Osaka. This year it is especially annoying to allergy sufferers in forested Yamanashi Prefecture, notes Marites Omori in what would have been an otherwise mysterious scene.

Pollen gust
above cedar forests
yellow calligraphy

Train pulls in
passengers on board
in white masks

　There are many ways that nature and man demarcate the seasons. Writing from Frankfurt, Maurice Sippel literally found a sign announcing the start of spring: a new art class. Michael Corr bet on its arrival in Aichi Prefecture.

A new sign
on the U.S. barracks' fence:
Spring into Art

Race track pink
brings back your red and
chestnut steeds

　Rutledge suggests that in the quiet moments that herald spring, "the old and used up also play a role ... maybe a kind of guardianship?" Sosuke Kanda embellishes this thought with the following haiku dedicated to the Kyoto Protocol. The inclement weather and pressure zones also sparked lightning storms that awakened Mickey Nasu in the middle of the night.

Sprouts of grass
I can hear the grief
warming earth

At midnight
startled by spring thunder
unfinished dream

　The passing of John Paul II was marked by Satoru Kanematsu with the following tribute.

Pigeons coo
our Holy Father
joins the stars

Want to try composing haiku ?

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