MITSUAKI KOJIMA

Haikuists are experts at poetically marking the timeline between autumn and winter, day and night, or the end of a festival and going home. Tatsuko Toshima held onto the final rays of autumn sunlight in Akita for as long as she could before writing the following poem.

Leaves fall
the last trace of daylight
pathos begins

Sosuke Kanda emphasizes news he heard from his son with a backdrop of thunder. Satoru Kanematsu draws the line on a fallen sumo champion.

Son's phone call
sudden transfer to Kyushu
autumn thunder

Deep autumn
fallen sumo champ
far back home

Sam Bett says he's tried to write haiku on previous occasions, but the following haiku is the first one he likes well enough to share with readers.

After the festival
a vendor's armful of squid
drops into the street

His haiku captures the very moment marketers fear most. He deftly contrasts the lively excitement of the fair with the exhaustion of having carried around dead weight for too long.

Cha Ryun Mi is enrolled in a haiku in English class at Tezukayama Gakuin University in Osaka. She originally submitted the following poem: A bunch of fresh roses/ without notice/wither. This form captures the time shortly after the first haiku moment of joy in having received the beautiful cut flowers and the haiku moment of realization yet to come that she hadn't looked at them again until they had faded.

Rose bouquet
without notice
withered

Shizuka Suzuki studies haiku at the Asahi Culture Club in Tokyo. She says she loves the smell of the fragrant olive tree when it blossoms in autumn. Yutaka Sakai sketches an autumn love scene reminiscent of embers glowing in the night.

Fragrant olive
always quietly alive
golden once alive

Maples are aflame
enveloped in dusk
life-long mate

The following poems by New Zealand poets, Tamara Rendell, Andre Surridge and Elaine Riddel, were honorably mentioned at the Seinan Jo Gakuin University International Haiku Contest.

Northern trees
let their flowers fall
into southern hands

Ginkgo leaves
perfect circle of gold
until this wind

Autumn trees
a flutter of sparrows
loosens the first leaves

Kristine Edlind was also mentioned.

Orange patches all over
the green leaves of a pear tree
painter nowhere to be seen

Kyushu-based writers Akiko Higuchi and Kana Ogata received certificates.

Endless autumnal colors
stretching like Japanese brocade kimono sash
Appalachian Mountains

Full of maples
red love goes simply
miracle

Want to try composing haiku ?

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The next issue of the Asahi Haikuist Network appears Nov. 17. Please mail haiku about the transition from autumn to winter to David McMurray at the International Herald Tribune/Asahi Shimbun, 5-3-2 Tsukiji, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 104-8011, fax 03-5541-8539, or e-mail <is@asahi.com>.