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planting an olive tree for my children late summer blues --Eva Limbach (Saarbrucken, Germany)
one fierce wave upon another... blue dragon drifts --Richard Thomas (Plymouth, U.K.)
aging b52s their tin roofs rusted --Curt Linderman (Seattle, Washington)
beyond the papaya trees beyond the rusty roofs-- the sea changes colour --Sandra Simpson (Tauranga, New Zealand)
last night’s argument-- the broken branches left by the storm --Pippa Phillips (St. Louis, Missouri)
a jumble of drift upon the shore crabs and gulls --Albert Schepers (Windsor, Ontario)
boats moored --a gull slaps itself on the mast --Noel King (Tralee, Ireland)
oil spill a dolphin inhales the dark dawn --Rene Bohnen (Pretoria, South Africa)
peeling flakes of mica and lowering my nose to rainy clover... I say, I’m keeping busy --Patrick Sweeney (Misawa, Aomori Prefecture)
afternoon prayers-- the black dog swims through a sea of tall, golden wheat --J.D. Nelson (Lafayette, Colorado)
------------------------------ FROM THE NOTEBOOK ------------------------------
Intramuros the feel of a cobbled street on a humid day --Archie Carlos (Manila, Philippines)
The haikuist penned this tribute to a historic walled city that faces the South China Sea. The Philippines is regularly breached by typhoons from June to September. The warming of the Pacific has strengthened the power of tropical storms and lengthened the typhoon season to December. Sandra Simpson’s fellow parishioners spent days praying for the safe return of sailors.
whalers’ church-- all the hassocks hand embroidered
Hifsa Ashraf reported that widespread areas in Pakistan were devastated by deadly monsoon floods. Nearly 300,000 homes were destroyed, so she is busy working with local fundraising organizations to help those in dire need.
rare family dinner the chili flakes sizzle in the sunflower oil
Sheila Barksdale took us safely in hand to join her childhood summer in Cornwall, England, “where the small coves and hidden rocks make for rough waves when the Atlantic tide rolls in. The meat pies in this haiku are Cornish pasties.”
Cling-wrapped meat pies: what we set aside for thrill of rough waves
Mel Goldberg watched daring thieves fly in low to snatch food from unsuspecting picnickers in San Nicholas de Ibarra, Mexico.
picnic on the beach the aggressiveness of seagulls
Melanie Vance said the roadside fields in Dallas, Texas, can be as pretty as the Gulf of Mexico.
color of the sea from one horizon to the other bluebonnets
Aleksandra Wajs’s brother in Warsaw, Poland, surprised the whole family by announcing he’d become a sailor.
morning ocean onto his first adventures young sailor steps aboard
Masumi Orihara felt revitalized when she heard Kenichi Horii had successfully traversed the ocean in a sailboat. Wajs was inspired by the old sailor.
tanned white-haired sailor’s smile across the Pacific non-stop solo sail
calloused hands holding up worn out ocean maps
Francis Attard dined al fresco in Marsa, Malta. Angela Giordano watched a bird nosedive into water without making a splash in Avigliano, Italy. Mike Fainzilber witnessed a perfect dive in Rehovot, Israel.
post coronavirus tablecloth with prints of fish for menu
the kingfisher swoops down-- on a trout’s flicker
kingfisher in flight one dive is enough
Adjei Agyei-Baah awoke early to fish in Kumasi, Ghana, but didn’t catch anything all day.
dawn fishing a lone canoe moves without a boatman
fishless day the fisherman’s shadow part of a rock
Brian Kibet studies haiku in the “Kenya Saijiki” class in Nairobi, Kenya.
wet soil-- black ants dragging a dead spider
Richard Thomas may have spotted a green sea turtle clamoring onto green algae floating at Plymouth Aquarium.
sea growth an algae raft for baby turtle
Bona M. Santos laments a harmful overgrowth off Los Angeles, California. Samo Kreutz was so upset that he couldn’t talk about the scum on the surface of the Adriatic Sea.
algal bloom along the coast empty fishing boats
ocean waves the foam swallows my voice
Eugeniusz Zacharski bowed an apology on a farm in Radom, Poland, located east of the Oder river where toxins were recently found in golden algae. harvest day the shadow of the scarecrow grovelling
Giordano fathomed the color of sadness.
Ocean... the eyes of the fisherman lost within the blue
Mario Massimo Zontini sighted sails after a storm in the Ligurian Sea.
the ocean sound of backwash-- in the offing, a ship
Slobodan Pupovac’s older brother was a sailor who died in a boating accident.
Indian Ocean a big wave carried away the sailor’s soul
Justice Joseph Prah got wind of an accident off Ghana.
cascading waves reporting the far-away death of sailors
Ram Chandran prayed for a divine soul that retained its bodily form on Earth.
monsoon rains-- the many avatar of the arabian seas
Mircea Moldovan recalled when soldiers stormed the beaches of Europe. Today, naval activities on the Black Sea related to the Ukraine war have caused a rise in reported cetacean deaths.
whales on the beach a veteran of war changes the channel
Stoianka Boianova relaxed after a storm passed by Sofia, Bulgaria. From a beach in South Carolina, John S. Gilbertson watched the sunset in the Atlantic Ocean.
storm over sea lions doze by the ocean shore
Ocean drowns light in a darkness of quiet
Marcie Wessels might have been purring the nursery rhyme “red sky at night sailor’s delight, red sky in the morning sailor’s warning” before a storm roiled up her bed in San Diego, California.
before sunrise the rough pink tongue of the cat
Murasaki Sagano reticently bit her tongue in Tokyo.
Autumn dusk a lull in the ocean restrained wave
Schepers kept time with rhythmic waves.
between ebb and flow the heron and gulls sounds from ancient rocks
Kiyoshi Fukuzawa looked toward the Iwafune-oki Oil and Gas Field in the stormy Sea of Japan offshore from Arai-Hama, Niigata Prefecture.
Offshore oil wells washed by storm waves appear then disappear
A retired professor in Cordoba, Argentina, Julia Guzman awoke from an afternoon dream to a familiar high-pitched sound of “tea-cher, tea-cher, tea-cher.”
the call of oven birds in the afternoon-- a distant storm
J.D. Nelson’s weather forecast came in threes: From the sight and sounds of ominous skies overhead Lafayette, Colorado.
three raptors circle high above the neighborhood-- the storm approaches
the thunder rumbles-- the three chickens seek shelter on the covered porch
a dove coos nearby-- the three hens in the bushes scratch & peck for bugs
Liz Gibbs watched someone rummage through a container for recyclable materials in Calgary, Alberta. Discarded items thrown in the trash are in the public domain.
dumpster diver closing the recycle bin he knows all her secrets
Jerome Berglund’s attention was drawn in one direction, toward Minneapolis, Minnesota.
one way the sign states desperately
Ian Willey realized summer holidays are surreal in the sense that our subconscious plays its part in the construction of their meaning. Using the metaphor of a road trip by car, he explains: “Looking ahead, the summer holidays always seem like a vast stretch of time, but looking back...”
summer vacation-- clouds appear closer than they are
Carl Brennan sensed the unchanging appearance of the sky over New York City. He was enraptured by the slow and melancholy progress of the clouds until they dissolved in a gray gently tinged with white.
Lilac scent riding the southeast wind Debussy’s “Nuages”
Murasaki Sagano’s garden experienced the tailwind of a typhoon.
Dragonflies in the impetuous wind uncontrollable
Keith Evetts awoke to a strong wind in Thames Ditton, U.K.
wind-blown grass I like you wild in the morning
Terrie Jacks saw switchgrass turn shades of deep red on the summertime prairies near Ballwin, Missouri.
fire grass wave after wave of red hair
Paul Callus admired nature’s strategic flexibility in Safi, Malta.
resilience-- rippling wheat bends with the wind
Marilyn Ward smiled affectionately at a windproof hairdo in Scunthorpe, England. Hifsa Ashraf tried a traditional hair treatment for dry, frizzy and dull hair in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
bus stop queue... defying the breeze grannie’s new perm
winter sunlight applying mustard oil to granny’s hair
Deborah A. Bennett was tempted to take a moonlight swim in Carbondale, Illinois.
in pale moonlight the lake the lake the lake honeysuckle scent
Chandran didn’t mind getting wet.
in each drop of this rain... the scent of Indian ocean
Murasaki Sagano sprang to her Tokyo high-rise window with a camera to create a photo-haiku about what a typhoon left behind.
Morning rainbow in pajamas at the balcony cellphone’s click
Take the plunge and write a haiku at http://www.asahi.com/ajw/special/haiku/ . The next issue of the Asahi Haikuist Network appears Sept. 30. Readers are invited to send haiku about camping on a postcard to David McMurray at the International University of Kagoshima, Sakanoue 8-34-1, Kagoshima, 891-0197, Japan, or e-mail to (mcmurray@fka.att.ne.jp).
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).
ASAHI HAIKUIST NETWORK/ David McMurray
ASAHI HAIKUIST NETWORK/ David McMurray
ASAHI HAIKUIST NETWORK/ David McMurray
ASAHI HAIKUIST NETWORK/ David McMurray
ASAHI HAIKUIST NETWORK/ David McMurray
ASAHI HAIKUIST NETWORK/ David McMurray
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