Fountain pen
its gold point still shines
Father’s Day
--Murasaki Sagano (Kyoto)
* * *
Cherry blossoms--
I miss the orchard
of my father
--Teresa Grzywacz (Poland)
* * *
Sitting under the tree
the father
of my protection
--Brenna Eberhart (Misawa, Aomori)
* * *
Eating watermelons
with my parents again--
summer dream
--Maria Santomauro (New York)
* * *
All night shower
feather left behind
baby swallow gone
--Minoru Nakamura (Komoro, Nagano)
* * *
Hailstones
while calling my wife
quickly gone
--Kiyoshi Fukuzawa (Tokyo)
* * *
Shaved ice!
I rush in
before I melt
--Ayaka Sugita (Hokkaido)
* * *
Plastic grooves
on the trashcan lid--
a raindrop’s journey
--Deborah Finkelstein (Massachusetts)
* * *
Jasmine in bloom
scented conversations
words unuttered
--Leon Enrique (Singapore)
* * *
Whisper in your ear
be here again next summer
wish upon fireworks
--Shiori Shimura (Sapporo)
-------------------------
FROM THE NOTEBOOK
-------------------------
Playing in rain
splashing it ‘round
kids under mom’s umbrella
--Koju Fujieda (Fukui Prefecture)
Onomatopoeia works well in poems about rain. The haikuist cares for a temple on the rainy Echizen coast where you might overhear him singing in English and Japanese: “Pitter patter, pitter patter, mamma comes. . . ame, ame, fure, fure, kaasan no, janome de omukae ureshii na picchi, picchi, chappu, chappu, ran, ran, ran.”
Tanja Trcek walks by a crumbling fisherman’s cottage in a lonely bay on the Adriatic coast of Slovenia. The owners plan to rebuild it someday, but Nature has started her work already.
From the crumbled wall
a blade of grass
a tiny blossom
Motoko Amatsuji celebrates Father’s Day in Hyogo Prefecture, where the freshwater ayu fishing season opens in June.
Grandpa cooks
young mountain sweetfish
reunion
Teiichi Suzuki misses his grandma, who used to spin stories until he fell asleep in a bed covered with mosquito netting.
Grandmother’s tale
in a mosquito net
summer dream
Mickey Nasu praises the grass greening the shores of Eastern Japan. Ramona Linke eyes a new student in Germany.
From debris
valiant wild grass
unconquered
* * *
Enrollment--
under bushy brows
impish eyes
Clouds roll in as Craig Steele pens his poem in Pennsylvania.
My shadow fades
sudden raindrops
cold
Horst Ludwig marks the end of an illustrious teaching career at Gustavus Adolphus College. Rain started to fall as he wrote his commemorative haiku.
High water--
where I want to walk
that’s the end.
Thomas Canull feels like dancing in Indiana. Croatian poet Djurdja Vukelic Rozic is in love. Barbara Taylor is knee-high in rain on her farm in Australia. Her haiku first appeared in the May-June 2011 issue of “Muse India.”
Mistress of the wind
dancing for the joy of it
string is a lifeline
* * *
Gurgling gutter
wall clock and my heart
pound too loud
* * *
Summer rains
pulling off one fat leech
after another
Yuki Kawahara peels the bark from a birch tree to pen a thank-you note to a friend in Kagoshima. Priscilla Lignori in New York and Asako Utsunomiya in Hiroshima remember the tsunami that washed away whole forests on March 11, 2011.
Trees become letters
to say thank you friends
summer sun
* * *
Withstanding the storm--
a single pine tree stands where
thousands used to be
* * *
Lone pine tree
I will always remember you
when I am down
Kiyoshi Fukuzawa arches his neck to see the top of the tallest tree in Tokyo. High above Jakarta, Rahadian Tanjung stretches back in his airline seat. Romano Zeraschi awakes from a nightmare. Yuji Hayashi follows the curve of a rainbow soaring over his home in Kitakyushu. Stephen Le Page looks to the horizon in Australia.
Rain in Tokyo
the Skytree alone
captures clouds
* * *
Thirty thousand feet
up above the cloud cushion
day is long
* * *
Endless fall
in a breathless nightmare--
cicada song
* * *
Over rain
dripping from eaves
a rainbow
* * *
Blue bottlenose
clouds hang on the line
‘tween sky and sea
-----------------------------------------------
The next issue of the Asahi Haikuist Network appears June 29. Readers are invited to send haiku about a quilting bee 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 also the editor of OUTREACH, a bi-monthly column featuring international teachers in The Language Teacher of the Japan Association for Language Teacher (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 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Asahi Culture Center, Matsuyama City, and Seinan Jo Gakuin University.
McMurray's books include: "Canada Project in Kyushu" Vol. 1 (2006) - Vol. 7 (2011), Pukeko: Fukuoka; "Haiku in English as a Japanese Language" (2003), Pukeko: Kitakyushu; and "Hospital Departmental Operations - A Guide for Trustees and Managers," Canadian Hospital Association: Ottawa, Canada.
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