children wave goodbye school of fish darts away captain’s horn echoes
–Julie Ann Lebitania (Sorsogon, Philippines)
* * *
wind chimes
dappled with sunlight
garden Buddha
–Chen-ou Liu (Ajax, Ontario)
* * *
Queen’s Gambit
a sunbeam skims over
the chess clock
–Ramona Linke (Saxony-Anhalt, Germany)
* * *
sinking sunray
following its path
swallows
–Uchechukwu Onyedikam (Lagos, Nigeria)
* * *
glimpses of courtyards
where lives go on in secret–
different from ours
–Alan Maley (Canterbury, England)
* * *
clouds of haiku
as I lay dreaming
in the grass
–Melissa Dennison (Bradford, England)
* * *
wedding day approaching
bride begins to count
just a summer dream
–Justice Joseph Prah (Accra, Ghana)
* * *
late day sun
the groom loses himself
in the bride’s shade
–Maya Daneva (The Hague, Netherlands)
* * *
often I cast shade
on my photographs…
crepuscular
–David Cox (Principality of Andorra)
* * *
Blackberry lilies
Nearby a postbox
languishing
–Murasaki Sagano (Tokyo)
——————————
FROM THE NOTEBOOK
——————————
bell cricket:
I don’t stay much longer once sensei
started breaking kids’ arms
— Jerome Berglund (New Orleans, Louisiana)
The haikuist “grew up in a rather rough and rowdy area with a lot of scrapping at the dojo… and studied taekwondo for a brief time.” Laila Brahmbhatt passed a sleepless night in New York. Krzysztof Kokot kept vigil in Nowy Targ, Poland.
Independence Day
homeless bookmark their shadows
on empty streets
* * *
blown out candle
over the sick bed
the shadow fluttered
Crickets sing nostalgically on autumn nights from dusk to dawn signaling the deepening of the season and the death of life. An avid fan of the game of cricket in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Ashoka Weerakkody explains that sticking one’s leg out at the wicket is a way of calling a batsman out.
Cricket Club
Wedding March–
leg before wicket
Monica Kakkar wore her best clothes in South Riding, Virginia.
frills and finery…
stirring the summer lake
fiery finale
Martina Matijevic didn’t need a wide-brimmed sunhat this summer in Vidovci, Croatia.
straw hat
in the closet’s shadow–
summer’s end
Murasaki Sagano observed office workers crane their necks to view electronic stock boards showing share prices on Wall Street.
Nihonbashi crowd
steamy business suits
black parasols
Chen-ou Liu rallied in Washington, D.C. Wieslaw Karlinski rested in Namysl0w, Poland.
the Capitol in shadow
a gray-haired man chanting, peace
the only battle!
* * *
tired pilgrim
on a roadside stone
the shadow of an oak
At a park in Minsk, Belarus, Philmore Place waited in line behind a tanker truck to buy a drink made from fermented bread. Stuck behind a long queue of discount shoppers, Satoru Kanematsu couldn’t find any shade. Shannon Wallace waited too long in Mississauga, Ontario.
queue for kvass–
the child shows his tongue
everyone who looks
* * *
Wiping sweat
to join a long line
buying rice
* * *
I waited until
perfect ripeness of the fruit
rotting on the floor
Teiichi Suzuki has an acute sense of taste for two pleasures in life.
Cold tofu–
falling to pieces
humbleness
* * *
Cold sake–
to become older
humility
Cornelia Rossberg ducked in Coburg, a historical city in northern Bavaria near the medieval Thuringian duchies of Germany.
the call of the falcon
arrow-quick shadow covers
briefly a piece of earth
Boryana Boteva stood in the lee of towering flower stalks in Sofia, Bulgaria.
a field of sunflowers
amongst golden traces
humility untouched
Not having spectacles at hand, Marshall Hryciuk let his colorful imagination fly in Toronto, Ontario.
red tulips or a cardinal
whichever
deepening in the shade
Sagano juxtaposed her circular sunglasses and oasis-like street trees. Further down the sunbaked street, the haikuist spotted a sign of autumn: the demure shape of unopened blue bellflower buds.
Round green shades
trees on a main street
heaven’s islands
* * *
humbly blooming
by withered sunflowers
balloon flowers
Rosemarie Schuldes acquiesced in Mattsee, Austria.
bitter quarrel
a bouquet of blue violets
left at the doorstep
Charlie Smith and his dog Wendy cooled their heels in Raleigh, North Carolina.
paws pause
crossing hot pavement
evening walk
Entering a dimly lit neighborhood coffeehouse, Masumi Orihara was greeted by a smiling barista pumping a big shiny metal coffeemaker.
espresso machine
gleams in aromatic dusk…
the way of coffee
At home in Parma, Italy, Mario Massimo Zontini felt a refreshing breeze.
summer shower
the coolness enters my room
winding around
Hesitating, Dennison was distracted by two snails in the shade of a pot on her patio.
signing on
the dotted line…
a pair of snails mating
Morgan Ophir likely felt as if he had been told to mind his own business in Sydney, Australia.
snail
reflected in a raindrop
turns its head
Aparna Pathak rolled over unconsciously in Gurugram, India.
independence day
turning back to him
in sleep
Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) knew what he was doing when he rolled over in his six-tatami mat sickroom to compose: mihotoke ni shirimuke oreba tsuki suzushi
I turn my back
on Buddha and face
the cool moon
————————————————————————————————————-
Cool haiku at http://www.asahi.com/ajw/special/haiku/. The next issues of the Asahi Haikuist Network appear Sept. 5 and 19. Readers are invited to compose haiku related to autumnal trees or typhoons. Mail your haiku on a postcard to David McMurray at the International University of Kagoshima, Sakanoue 8-34-1, Kagoshima, 891-0197, Japan, or by e-mail to (mcmurray@fka.att.ne.jp).
* * *
David McMurray
David McMurray has been writing the Asahi Haikuist Network column since April 1995, first for the Asahi Evening News. He is on the editorial board of the Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku, columnist for the Haiku International Association, and is editor of Teaching Assistance, a column in The Language Teacher of the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT).
McMurray is professor of intercultural studies at The International University of Kagoshima where he lectures on international haiku. At the Graduate School he supervises students who research haiku. He is a correspondent school teacher of Haiku in English for the Asahi Culture Center in Tokyo.
McMurray judges haiku contests organized by The International University of Kagoshima, Ito En Oi Ocha, Asahi Culture Center, Matsuyama City, Polish Haiku Association, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Seinan Jo Gakuin University, and Only One Tree.
McMurray’s award-winning books include: “Teaching and Learning Haiku in English” (2022); “Only One Tree Haiku, Music & Metaphor” (2015); “Canada Project Collected Essays & Poems” Vols. 1-8 (2013); and “Haiku in English as a Japanese Language” (2003).