I was eagerly awaiting your next post. Been a bit busy myself, though.
己とも甘い紅葉ハラハラと
おのれともあまいこうようハラハラと
Sweet red leaves
Flittering down
On their own
You say this reminds you of home; I guess you don’t live in a temperate climate anymore? Your poem made me realize I probably haven’t appreciated the falling leaves much in recent years though.
Also, I don’t know enough grammar to understand the nuances of とも, so I’m not sure if that’s essential to the meaning.
そとしらず まどにすがるか ふゆはえよ
Oblivious,
Clinging to window,
Winter fly
Wow 蠅 is a weird-looking kanji. Apparently there are two forms as well? (蝿). I’m assuming the latter is a simplified version of the former considering it contains the more common 亀 radical. Also, I think the か particle here is for emphasis, not inquiry, right?
I actually moved from one temperate climate to another! But up in the far reaches of Japan, there are very few maple trees so I rarely get to see the beautiful fall colors.
So the first line is tricky because it uses the poetic form of 己 to mean “myself.” The とも is being used as “together with,” and ハラハラ is working double time for me to both give the imagery of falling leaves, as well as the secondary meaning of falling tears. So the intended meaning becomes something like “My tears fall along with the fragrant maple leaves.”
I think your translation is actually a very good haiku though. I’ve asked some native Japanese people to read a lot of my haiku, and apart from this one, the 冬蠅 one, and the 花曇り one, the meaning is too unclear. I lean on using dictionaries a lot, and even with J→J dictionaries, it’s hard to tell the frequency with which some definitions are used. I think for a haiku to be effective, it has to paint a clear picture and trying to shove a lot of clever double meanings into them probably comes back to bite me in that respect. Hopefully they’ve at least been fun puzzles for some Japanese learners to figure out 
I think most people just use ハエ because the kanji is a little crazy. Most haiku that I’ve seen use this 季語 use the kanji 蠅 though. I’m not sure which version of the kanji came first because on Jisho it lists 蠅 first and that’s also what shows up in my IME first (but that might because I’ve used it a couple of times already).
I think the main reason that this haiku was understandable to most of my Japanese friends that I asked was because of the particles か and よ. The reason I didn’t use 冬の蠅 and instead opted to go for 冬蠅よ is because I wanted to make it clear that this haiku is from the perspective of a human watching the fly. With that in mind here, the か actually does function as a question marker, albeit a rhetorical one. The human is remarking with bemusement the fruitless nature of what the fly is doing.
One of my favorite sites for 季語, 季語と歳時記 – きごさい歳時記, describes 冬の蠅 as
With this connotation and the irony of the fact that the fly will spend its entire life indoors while desperately trying to escape to the outside world that it cannot even survive in, the human judges the fly. But ultimately the fly is just doing what’s in its nature, like many of us do. I don’t expect people reading it to think about it so philosophically, but unlike my previous haiku, this one evokes a very clear and simple image that can be enjoyed without such deep thinking. This is also my first haiku that I wrote based on a very recent real life experience! I was sitting inside a lodge with a friend while at a dog sledding race up here, and remarked to him about a fly that was on the window. By chance the following Monday I stumbled across the 季語 冬の蠅 and it felt like the haiku practically wrote itself.
Wow, I really missed a whole meaning huh. I had a vague feeling there was something more to it but alas my grammar isn’t up to par.
They’ve certainly been fun for me 
Ah, the fruitless nature of a fruit fly.
Can’t blame you there! Onomatopoeia are one of my biggest weak spots and also very rare in haiku. I have no idea if I’ll ever get to a point where I can feel exactly what they mean without looking it up.
This made me realize I don’t know the Japanese word for fruit fly 
There are 6 words showing up on Jisho but the only one that seems remotely practical is 小蠅 (of course 99% of people would use the katakana as well)
The sun is shining and it feels like spring is finally on its way (even way up north here)!
東風吹けば運んだ想い届くかな
Little bit of background info:
I wrote this with a person who lives to the west of me in mind.
こちふけば はこんだおもい とどくかな
If the East Wind blows
Might my carried feelings
Be delivered?
5-6-4
Will these carried
Feelings be delivered if
the East Wind blows?
4-6-4
I like the flow of the first one better but it lacks syllable balance. This one seems straightforward but I thought that about the last one and I ended up missing a whole meaning haha. At kigosai.sub.jp, it explains the east wind as blowing from the Pacific Ocean towards continental Asia, and that it is thought of as a warm wind that melts snows, lets ume flowers bloom, and is sometimes the causer of stormy sea weather. If I am missing something I am guessing it is in something to do with the symbolism of the East wind.
Of the four Anemoi (Greek wind spirits), the East wind is usually Eurus, and is associated with storms and bad weather. Apparently it has the meaning of destruction and storms in the Bible as well. I am saying this because I was curious if I might be able to get away with using “Eurus” in an English translation to save syllables versus East wind, and I thought it interesting that they share some same meanings when I searched up the winds’ symbolisms. Perhaps there is some geographic/meteorogical explanation?
In any case, plainly speaking, the haiku is about you wondering wistfully whether the East wind will be able to carry your feelings Westward, as far as I can tell. (Is there some deeper connotation to 想い than what appears in dictionaries? - thought/imagination, mind, heart/desire,wish,hope,expectation/love,affection/feelings,emotion,sentiment).
This one is indeed quite straightforward! I was trying to focus on a 季語 that has relatively few morae and also not make it too confusing or vague. One interesting nuance that I did find interesting was about the usage of 吹けば:
I saw an example of a 俳句 using 東風吹かば and I was scratching my head wondering what conjugated form that was and what the difference between that and 吹けば would be. Apparently, 吹かば has the nuance “if the wind blew,” whereas 吹けば is more like 吹くと as in “the wind blows (and then something happens).” I still have no clue what the conjugated form is called, but I’m ok with that for now
I would also like to know more about this connection! I’m sure the winds have a lot of significance no matter what culture you look at, but it’s also interesting to see the differences.
This is something that I wanted to double check with my partner who’s much more knowledgeable about 俳句 than me. In the past, I’ve seen 俳句 where using a different form of a kanji took too much attention away from the 季語 and weakened the whole thing. In this case, her response made me realize how major my mistake was: (translated)“We don’t really use 思い or 想い in 俳句.”
By using those words, I committed one of the 8 taboos (禁忌) of 俳句:
感動を露出した句を詠まない
Basically, I was too upfront about my emotions, which made it lose all elegance. I left it up because it was a great learning experience for me, but it was added to my personal list of 俳句 failures 
Apparently, if it were a 川柳 or even expanded to be a 短歌, it would be perfectly fine to be so clear about feelings. 俳句 once again proves to be an incredibly difficult art to master!
I’m still learning the nuances of all the conditional forms
I’ll keep my eyes open in case I find some explanation.
This explains a lot about why haiku are written the way they are (often describing some scenery and only implying the author’s feelings about said scenery), excuse me while I go read more about these 八禁句.
Oh by the way I forgot to write something before - I noticed that the South Wind 南風 and East Wind 東風 have “special” names (east wind - こち, south wind - はえ) besides the onyomi and kunyomi readings, while the West and North winds don’t (they have only onyomi and kunyomi readings). Any idea as to why that may be? Were the east and south winds perhaps more historically important?
I believe you’re correct about east and south winds being more historically important. The east winds would melt the snow and cause the plum blossoms to bloom and the south winds would bring the rainy season. From what I’ve seen online, Japanese people didn’t associate the north and west winds with anything, so they didn’t get a special name. That being said it seems like there are some rare special names for 東北の風 and 東南の風, which are ならい and いなさ respectively.
One source I’ve found states that こち came from an ancient form of 東 which was ヒムカチ, which was shortened to カチ and eventually became コチ. Then コチカゼ was shortened again to コチ. Another source states that はえ was already an ancient Japanese word and just took on the kanji 南風 but I’m not sure where they got that and I can’t find that meaning of はえ in Weblio 古文
I got some help on how to express my ideas for this one, so the style might seem different than all of the previous ones:
木漏れ日を背にゆけ鹿の子のびのびと