Rita's Haiku in Asahi

Rita Odeh from Nazareth reworks a poem about viewing blossoms with a child. It won a Sakura Award in the 2008 Vancouver Cherry Blossom contest. In the April 20, 2012, issue of the Asahi Haikuist Network, she delayed the appearance of the season word until the third line. This heightens the reader’s interest in the child’s point of view. Positioning the plum blossoms on the first line can imply that both the child and Odeh are admiring and chatting about the blossoms simultaneously. If placed on the last line, a possible meaning of the poem could be that the child is coaxing the haikuist to look at something unbelievably beautiful. Chen-ou Liu admires the shape of a hand in Ajax, Ontario.

Plum blossoms--
a child asks
if they are real

asahi