MITSUAKI KOJIMA

Though J.D. Heskin makes light of his advancing years, his haiku effectively exhibits a latent potency.

His haiku asks: ``How is it that I have grown so old?'' The power of his poem lies in the subtle suggestion of pleasant autumn days when one can enjoy taking the time to chat-to neighbors raking leaves or with friends at a coffee shop. He speaks with measured words but his interlocutors move at a hastier pace, always thinking one step ahead. Poets such as Heskin sometimes use ellipsis-deliberately omitting words that the reader has to supply to make a line grammatically complete.

Paul Faust uses dialog in the next poem to refer to an amusing game for babies in which one repeatedly hides his face and pops back into view. The final line of his 5-7-5 syllable haiku poetically refers to the festival of Halloween mentioned by Michael Corr on his first line. Halloween is the short name for All Hallow Even when children play pranks and go door-to-door in the neighborhood aking for sweets and autumn fruits. Allhallows is a shorter expression for All Hallow's Day or All Saint's Day celebrated Nov. 1 as a Christian feast in honor of all the saints.

She says, ``peek-a-boo''
he then replies, ``I see you''
Eve of All Hallows

Halloween
moon trapezoidal
lane lamp fools

Teruko Omoto dedicates her haiku to cats-perhaps the black cats that children imagine can turn into witches? Unfortunately, Yutaka Kitajima's cat was injured.

Kids gone home
a cat sits alone
on the bench

Chilly night
completely silent...
my cat hurt

Charlie Smith wrote about noisy dogs in Hiroshima and Tomislav Vujcic noted how all the hounds in Serbia and Montenegro lay silent during a fierce storm.

Hounds from hell
howling in distress
fire hydrant

Bitter autumn storm_
the dogs stop barking
in the village

Sagami Matsuda took delight in observing how a dog and his owner sniffed perfumed autumn air together in Osaka. Reiko Nishimura was also attracted to an autumn fragrance while out for a midnight walk in Minamata, Kumamoto.

A man and his dog
stop for its fragrance
kinmokusei

Pitch dark path
sound, then smell of fallen
persimmon

Autumn storms sometimes take the shape of swirling typhoons and hurricanes. Hurricanes are personified with the names of men and women by weathercasters in the United States. Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of New Orleans, notes Barbara Casterline from Nagoya and John Ower in Massachusetts.

Katrina_
what a pretty name
what big teeth

Coffee, cooking bacon_
the aid worker's showing off
great Katrina photos

Mina Nakagoshi also chose to write about what she felt after a storm passed by her home in Osaka. She is enrolled in the Haiku in English class at Tezukayama Gakuin University. Contrasting the dreamlike poem of Murasaki Sagano's haiku in the column today, Ali Miyazawa uses onomatopoetic ``s'' sounds to capture the sounds of rustling leaves during a restless sleep.

After the rain
crickets singing
in concert

Sleepless night
of subtle noises
drifting leaves


-END-

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The next issue of the Asahi Haikuist Network appears in the Nov. 5-6 edition. Readers are invited to mail haiku about the changing colors of autumn leaves, contest announcements and haiku books for review to David McMurray at the International Herald Tribune /Asahi Shimbun, 5-3-2 Tsukiji, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 104-8011.