FROM THE NOTEBOOK

First spring winds are somewhat cold and unreliable. The first notes of the young uguisu sound garbled. This haiku by Mickey Nasu will make you guess what he is listening to. Is the music he describes being made by multitudinous winds or from a bush warbler, uguisu? In early spring, neither weather nor bird are melodious to begin with.

Thousand winds
how encouraging it sings
vernal equinox

As the weeks pass, the winds become milder breezes, the birds more virtuous songsters. Murasaki Sagano finds some warmth in the look of the cheeks of a stranger in Kyoto.

Tepidly
smiling passerby
the spring wind

At this time of year brisk autumn winds blow in Australia, notes Sue Stanford. Snow continues to blow across the Canadian plains, writes Shirla White in Saskatchewan. When northerly winds blow down from Canada butterflies migrate to Mexico, writes Patricia Neubauer in Pennsylvania.

Brisk wind
half the maple leaves
swept clean away

After the blizzard
the discarded chair
padded with snow

North wind
hurrying late monarchs
toward the Yucatan

The unusual juxtaposition of lines in Reiko Nishimura's poem leaves the reader to decide whether it would be better to stand like a pretty tree or to be as changeable as the spring wind.

Koju Fujieda was attracted by the strength of a large white lily bloom in a floral arrangement set on a table in Echizen, Fukui Prefecture.

Plums blossom
how I wish to be
mischievous wind

How vibrant
lily stamen stands
lunch table

Synaesthesia is the phenomenon by which poets describe one of the senses by another. The verb throbbing usually describes the feel of a pulse, blood flowing to the beat of a heart in love. Anne Marie McHarg successfully confuses our sensory perceptions in the next poem where she has us listening to the rhythmic vibrations of air pounded by the call of a bird. The effect vividly describes this otherwise elusive haiku moment.

Daybreak brings
first notes of birdsong
throbbing air

During the first weeks of spring the gentle imagery of children blowing bubbles in Toni Calvello's poem awakens our memories of summers past.

A breeze is a light gentle wind, with a meteorological velocity range from 6 to 50 kilometers per hour.

McHarg describes the demise of a white flower, not a rose; perhaps it's a garden peony. The color of cherry blossoms could be described as white with a pinkish hue, but her inversion of the usual order of adjectives is a technique poets use to startle the reader.

Bubbles
float across the yard
spring breeze

Scattering
of rose white petals
summer breeze

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The next issue of the Asahi Haikuist Network appears May 5, Children's Day. Send haiku 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>.