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MITSUAKI KOJIMA |
The timely haiku by Nobuko Masakawa that tops the column today suggests that rain dampened the students' zeal to play with the soccer ball. Or, perhaps they were at home watching the football matches in Germany on TV? Writing from Bruchsal in Germany, Andrea D'Alessandro didn't practice what she tried to preach. In similar fashion, Tatsuko Toshima was so smitten by a brilliant blue sky that she said she almost forgot to write about it. But she did write, brilliantly.
No need
to write about cherry blooms
just look
Skyward gaze
forgetting haiku
melts to cobalt
Paul Faust describes the rain falling in Ashiya, Hyogo Prefecture. He chose a 5-7-5 syllable form to emulate the slow moving scene, whereas Anna Akamatsu prefers the pithier 3-5-3 form to capture the staccato notes of the thunderstorm that hit Kawasaki.
Endless is the rain
foliage a verdant glow
through crystalline mists
Suddenly
came thunder and rain
a sharp joy
An accomplished author based in Illinois, Charlotte Digregorio also chose a minimal number of words to describe what it feels like to see in the dark.
Lights out ...
watching
thunderstorm
Traveling or thinking about far away places can inspire poets to compose creatively. In the haiku above, Prijono Tjiptoherijauto mentions morning breezes that brought a flock of crows from afar.
She is an Indonesian professor currently posted at the Graduate School for International Cooperation Studies in Kobe University. Her thoughts were likely with the earthquake survivors in Java when she penned this haiku. The world is not so large, writes J.D. Heskin from Duluth, Minnesota.
Boy in yellow
jacket on a lonely
bus
Today's sun
belongs to those faraway,
but the moon is mine
Mangoes are blossoming in Pune, India, reports Kala Ramesh. Australian poet Lorne Henry recently went to Shanghai.
Mango blossoms...
here there everywhere
childhood memories
School children
writing Chinese characters
lightning fast
Nobuko Masakawa wrote the next poem while savoring a cup of imported tea.
Afternoon tea
smells of the soil
of India
The following haiku mentioning firsts bring today's column to a close. They are by Patrick Sweeney, who lives near a military base in Misawa-shi, Aomori Prefectuure, and J.D. Heskin.
Dawn
the fragile first things
the soldier sees
Great back then
but years have diminished it--
my first haiku
Want to try composing haiku ?
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The next issue of the Asahi Haikuist Network appears July 1. Readers are welcome to mail haiku for the season, contest announcements and haiku anthologies for review to David McMurray at the International Herald Tribune/Asahi Shimbun, 5-3-2 Tsukiji, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 104-8011. A color version of the Asahi Haikuist Network can be seen at <www.asahi.com/english/haiku>.
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ASAHI WEEKLY