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MITSUAKI KOJIMA |
Lorne Henry notes birds are usually first to sense the change of seasons. Weather-wise she writes, Australia is still experiencing "cold days and nights, but there was a magpie with sticks in its beak and yesterday the blue wrens in my garden were showing their beautiful blue breeding colors."
Still winter
but magpie carries sticks
wren turns blue
In Osaka, Hidehito Yasui wrote a haiku referring to early summer, the mating season for some turtles. Turtles court by fanning their front-claws with prospective mates. Ian Willey spied a shy specimen in a pond near his home in Takamatsu.
Reservoir
turtles swim in circles
hand in hand
Duckweed pond
hidden in the shade
turtle's face
Charlie Smith is a scientist in North Carolina. As an amateur haikuist he is also keen to mark changes in the weather. Charlotte Digregorio refers to a weather beacon in her poem. She is an author living in Winnetka, Illinois.
Shuttle launch
summer storm clouds
in the east
Thunderstorm ...
I hear
the beacon
John Martone brightened up the outside of his house and garden fence in Charleston, Illinois, with a fresh coat of paint. The plants that grow around his fence also got splashed. Bindweed belongs to the morning glory family. In haiku, bindweed is a summer season word, whereas poems that refer to the morning glory are categorized as autumnal images. The more colorful and showy trumpet-shaped flowers of the morning glory are cultivated as garden plants. Hidenori Hiruta had let his hair grow longer this summer, but perhaps sensing the beginning of fall he decided to spruce up his appearance.
Even bindweed
gets a coat
of house paint
Morning glory
looking years younger
hair cut short
Wisteria also likes to intertwine writes Paul Conneally in Loughborough, England, in a poem that moves up and down as quick as a mouse. Wisteria is usually mentioned in spring poetry, although it blooms in the early summer in Britain. Slowed by the summer heat in Japan, Satoru Kanematsu writes about walking up and down an overhead pedestrian bridge.
Wisteria coils
all the way up the down pipe
a house mouse
Midday heat
going up and down
the footbridge
Shoji Sugisaka is a painter, an amateur artist. He personifies the frog in this next poem, and likewise Kiyoshi Fukuzawa personified the rain. Japanese hydrangea bloom during the rainy season in early spring, but usually bloom in late summer in North America.
Painting
the rain green
a tree frog
Raindrops
end their long journey--
hydrangea
Want to try composing haiku ?
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The next issue of the Asahi Haikuist Network appears Sept. 16. Readers are invited to send haiku about travels, contest announcements, club meetings, and haiku anthologies for review to David McMurray at the International Herald Tribune/Asahi Shimbun, 5-3-2 Tsukiji, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 104-8011, by fax to 03-5541-8539, or by e-mail to ＜is@asahi.com＞.
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ASAHI WEEKLY