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MITSUAKI KOJIMA |
A pink seagull is an auspicious sign for Ian Willey. A teacher, he found himself lost in thought while proctoring an hour-long examination at a junior college. His wife was pregnant, and he was anxiously awaiting the results of a job interview. The college afforded a splendid view of the Seto Inland Sea, however, and he soon became entranced by the motion of birds circling the school.
He composed this haiku to commemorate landing the job, and holding a newborn daughter the day before Valentine's Day. Similarly lost in time, London poet Anne-Marie McHarg says she hasn't been able to write for a long time, and "did think of stopping altogether as it has been difficult to put pen to paper."
A flock of gulls
orbit this classroom
one of them pink
Lost in thought
drilling into ground
a blackbird
Writing in the summer heat of Branxton Australia, Lorne Henry watched the skies until she laid her eyes on these two passing haiku.
Insouciantly
swallows are improvising
patterns in blue
Dinosaur backbone
overlaid by misty bat
pictures in the sky
While walking past a nursery school in Osaka, Sagami Matsuda spotted some color peeping through the snow. He wrote his haiku dedicated to the unknown flower about the same time as Mickey Nasu wrote his haiku about primroses blooming in Tokyo. That clue might provide the answer to Matsuda's rhetorical question. The primula species include popular garden plants such as primroses, which guard their delicate buds with crusty brown leaves during the winter.
Not knowing
any of their names
winter flowers
The way forward
hidden by snow
primulas in bloom
Charlie Smith penned the following poem upon returning home from a sabbatical in Hiroshima to Raleigh, North Carolina. It is followed by another somewhat jaded view of Valentine's Day penned by Takashi Ikari in Tokyo.
Long-stemmed rose
pricks finger
and healing heart
Belgian chocolate
and 2006 diamond studs
now on sale
Jean Pierre Opsomer joins the Asahi Haikuist Network from Roeselare, Belgium. His pen name is "Jempy." His first draft, didn't contain the season word "spring sunshine," but closed with the encouraging line: Hope of harmony. High School student Chika Yoshitake also makes a debut in the column today by writing about hailstones.
Touch of the Orient
spring sunshine on a bridge
to Western shores
Hailstones
dancing
in a busy New Year
At the first meeting of the Satsumasakura haiku club in Kagoshima, members chose the following poem by Yoriko Tashiro as a noteworthy example of the gentle touch of a gardener who only clips flowers that can no longer withstand the rains.
Folding into itself
rainy day narcissus
clippers
Want to try composing haiku ?
Back numbers
The next issue of the Asahi Haikuist Network appears March 4. Readers are invited to send haiku about Hina Matsuri--the Doll Festival--to David McMurray at the International Herald Tribune/Asahi Shimbun 5-3-2 Tsukiji, Tokyo 104-8011, or by fax to 03-5541-8539.
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