MITSUAKI KOJIMA

Evening train
face in windowpane
reflects spring

A rising moon, streetlamps, automobile taillights, and perhaps the glow of pure white magnolia are about all commuters can see outside a train window at night. Windows act as mirrors and reflect the advertising posters and passengers. Doc Sunday sees his face reflected in the pane. There is no one to talk to on the way home. Once a young medical doctor at the Red Cross Hospital, this spring evening he recollects those cherished memories from his youth. Doc Sunday a pseudonym, the professor pens his thoughts in a 3-5-3 syllable poem.

Hidehito Yasui went for a moonlit walk in Osaka.

Breath of air
fading moonlight
hazy night

The sight of cherry blossoms on the campus of Seinan Jo Gakuin University in Kita-Kyushu made Saori Suenaga reminisce her days as a freshman. Her professor of English, Yuji Hayashi, penned his haiku looking out the window of a local train traveling to Fukuoka.

Cherry trees
walking recollecting
memory

Local train
cherry blossoms hail
unmanned stop

Takashi Ikari felt he was at an orchestra when cherry blossoms unfurled at a park in Tokyo. Blossoms brightened an otherwise gloomy day for Marites C. Omori on her farm in Yamanashi. Horst Ludwig pines for the blossoms he saw on his university campus in Minnesota.

Bowing to the conductor
cherry blossoms simultaneously
at their best

Spring morning
darkened by rainfall
cherry blossoms

Icy storm
the cherry blossoms
ripped off, pale.

The World Haiku Club conducted its ninth World Haiku Festival in Bangalore, India. Over 50 Indian haiku poets from different parts of the country and haikuists from Ireland, Britain and the United States discussed issues including the future of haiku in India, attended various haiku workshops, awarded the newly created World Haiku Club Award and enjoyed Indian classical dance and poem recitals by actors. One of the conference participants, Rebba Singh shares her dream.

I lay still
waiting to be covered
sakura by sakura

Satoru Kanematsu laments traffic conditions in Nagoya. Mickey Nasu chuckles at the traffic conditions during his vacation in Ishigakijima island. Tokyo-based Noriko Yoshida makes us think she may have been caught up in a similar traffic jam, but she wrote her haiku at a park brimming full of spring flowers.

Want to try composing haiku ?

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Readers are invited to submit haiku to David McMurray at the International University of Kagoshima, Sakanoue 8-34-1, Kagoshima, 891-0197 or e-mail to <mcmurray@fka.att.ne.jp>. . One haiku will be highlighted in the May 2 newsprint issue of the Asahi Haikuist and runners up will be featured in the Asahi Haikuist Network and From the Notebook at <www.asahi.com/english/haiku>.