LOTHLORIEN POETRY JOURNAL, January 2025, Editor Strider Marcus Jones

                                             Kira

A piece of heaven for tourists with its fauna and flora, the Danube Delta is tough on the locals living on a strip of land, as they are dependent on boats at all times. Many of them drifted away like floating reeds, but the elders remained. They are deeply rooted in the banks of the Danube. It’s a mild, autumn day, same as it was fifty years ago, when the cranes were leaving and the fisherman brought Kira by boat to be his bride.

He fares her back now; there is no graveyard here...

                             scythe on shoulder –

                             how beautifully grows the grass

                             in her eyes

 

 

               Hidden paths

In the harsh light of noon, the woman’s hand over the eyes trembles like a broken wing She lowered the garden fence, so she can see as far as the horizon, where someone appears now and then, but never reaches her. As the  sparrows are dozing off among blue morning glories, the silence seems too hard to be broken, but a ship’s horn sounds and some ray of hope is flitting across her blushing face. Time to pull off the weeds on the pathway home again...

two cups of tea  –

coming at the right time

a cloud of rain

 

 

                                              Nostalgia

There comes a day that seems like the very last one, when you feel the urge to take the final steps, where you also took your first, so I take my backpack and head to the train station. Once arrived, I wend my way through the blue-eyed thistles (childhood friends). Everything is unchanged, only the forest looks like a defeated army. A motorbike raises a monster of dust who is about to engulf me, but rain drops collapse it. I finally can see my slumped shoulders house and a fluttering flowered dress.

                              homesickness –

greeting me with open arms          

the scarecrow

Daily Haiga - January 2025

 

The Pan Haiku Review issue 4 (December 2024)

 

The Pan Haiku Review issue 4 (December 2024)

haibun & tanka-bun edition

Winter 2024

PHR4 editor: Alan Summers

Parking lots

There was still grass here last year, now it’s a new parking lot. A burning-hot asphalt carpet laid over the flower bed, in front of my grandparents' house, where I have always returned, enjoying the orchard, and the little lake that has dried up in the meantime.

Fewer trees, many more parking lots, so they cut down the orchards too.

The only one left is chainsaw redefined, I feel it's my grandfather's walnut tree, by the way he holds the head bowed, looking at his beloved land.

 

the branches of a tree

tied up behind its back –

tightlipped birds

 

Omnibus

I knock on our house door, but it's not my mother who opens. Seeing my doubt in front of the door, the wind smacks it against the wall. Something that looks like a being, a steamy silhouette wearing a long flowery printed dress, swirls around, engulfs

me, while its imprints fly all over the room. What a fresh plum blossom scent!

Suddenly, the wind calms down, the clouds wash out, and the ghost is gone, but all these white petals left on the floor are a sign that I'm not the only one coming home now and then...

 

honeycomb –

a butterfly alights

on the sweet knife

ESUJ-H / JANUARY 2025

 Judge: Emiko Miyashita (Haiku poet)

 Judge: Yuzo Ono (Haiku poet)

ramshackle house --
in a bicycle basket
chirping baby birds

Haiga im focus, Januar 2025

 

Failed haiku - A Journal of English Senryu, Issue 106, 2025

 

HAIKU EUROPEAN TOP 100

 

The Nineth Mt. Fuji Tanka Grand Prize Award (Japan) 2024

 Nominated for  Excellent

 

very few left
to hug on New Year's Eve -
two white reflections
in the same cracked window,
Mt. Fuji and the old man

Daily Haiga December 2024

 

L’estran Numéro 3

 

portail grinçant –

je vais voir, peut-être

ce n’est pas le vent

HAIGA IM FOCUS, DEZEMBER 2024

 

ARDEA ISSUE 9, December 2024, a multilingual short-form poetry journal.

 

First published in Entrevous Magazine, Canada, winning the 2023 award of the year in this category. 

 

Editor: JOHN KINORY

Failed haiku nr. 104 - November 2024

 Sunflowers

Long time ago, the old man lost his belongings along with his
personal library. Sometimes, he takes his walking stick and the
faded hat and goes down into the city to look for books. He knows an easy access point to the paper recycling bin, then piles everything there is to read into a bag and returns to his world of sunflower walls and cloud ceiling. From the hump of the horizon, streak lightnings spread out all over and the enamel sky cracks.

world, where to?
the truth lies
in sunflower fields

Haiga im Focus - November 2024

 

Kyoto Haiku Project / Writing on the “Peace”, October 2024

change of season -

children planting cherry trees

in the scorched orchard 

 

the rain is over -

children playing badminton 

over the barbed wire 

 

air raid siren - 

unfinished chalk pigeon

in the schoolyard 

 

war orphan -

searching for a kindred spirit

in the woods

Akita International - Haiku beyond Earth「天上俳句会」By Hidenori Hiruta , October 23

Inspired by my ten English haiku, Hidenori Hiruta translated them literally into Japanese short poems first of all.

 

As a result, four interpretative Japanese poems of 5, 7, 5 pattern are added to the English haiku as above. Some of them might be haiku（俳句）, and others senryū（川柳). 

 

And six of the English haiku are interpreted into Japanese tanka（短歌）poems of 5,7,5,7,7 pattern.

This is because English is different from Japanese. 

 

compelled to leave –

a thistle from home

worn on the shawl

我が家去るショールに薊巻きしまま

2

where there’s hay,

that’s where I’m home –

rigged maps

干し草の匂う我が家や地図に無し

3

burnt orchard –

flying starlings scatter

cherry pits

焼け落ちし果樹園を飛ぶ椋鳥がサクランボ食べ種を散らばす

4

blind windows –

I follow the light

of the third eye

盲窓第三の目で光追ふ

5

forehead in the grass –

a caterpillar falls on

the tattooed butterfly

草むらに額現る毛虫かなタトゥーのつきし蝶に落ちけり

6

grazing land –

in the wake of grasshoppers,

acid rain

放牧地バッタに続き酸性雨

7

mankind, where to?

passing through ruins,

a duck with duckling

廃墟群アヒルとその子通り抜く我ら人類向かうのは何処

8

stranded dolphins –

we miss the hole point

of this act

座礁せしイルカの群れに考えるこの行動の本質如何に

9

napping
atop a haystack –
cricket concert

干し草の山の上にて昼寝する蟋蟀の鳴く音楽会に

10

road facing window –
a pile of medicines
next to a quince

窓通し見える道路にマルメロと薬の山がその隣には

Fireflies' Light, Issue 30, Octobre 2024

 

Cafe Haiku, 2024, City Scape

 

 

 

 

Talking about strawberries all of the time / October 2024

 Talking about strawberries all of the time is an online literary journal based out of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and was founded by Malcolm Curtis in the summer of 2018.

 

Haiga im Focus - October 2024

 

Under the Bashō 2024 / Haibun

 

                             Rustling shadows

Day after day, after day, after day, until one day...

And then, not even a day goes by and someone

(someone else) comes to clean up the place...

Few garbage bags: our memories.

 

rustling shadows –

 

an origami crane 

                         through the shredder

 

 

 

       Foșnet de umbre

Zi după zi, după zi, după zi, până într-o zi...

Apoi, după nici măcar o zi, vine cineva (altcineva) și face curățenie generală...

Câțiva saci menajeri: amintirile noastre.

 

foșnet de umbre –

 

un cocor origami 

 

                         în tocător de foi