Summer dream
a reed boat basks in the sun
on Titicaca
--Garry Eaton (Canada)
* * *
Summer gathering
bright colours of the fabrics
auspicious to all
--Martine Brugiere (France)
* * *
Bee in the flower head
dusted from head to toe
when will you emerge!
--Hamish Montgomery (Scotland)
* * *
Quilting bee
between cloth patches
needling talk
--Hidehito Yasui (Osaka)
* * *
Summer breeze
freshly shaven head
light and cool
--Satoru Kanematsu (Nagoya)
* * *
No more smoke
from hermit's cabin--
a loon calls
--John Hamley (Ontario)
* * *
God all alone
after the temple bells
rush to the queue for Prasad
--A. Thiagarajan (India)
* * *
Rainy day
another cup in turn
quilting bee
--Murasaki Sagano (Kyoto)
* * *
Sailing
down the Mississippi--
Mark Twain and I
--Maria Santomauro (New York)
* * *
Busy Monday morning
between Queens and Times Square
subway moves noiselessly
--Prijono Tjiptoherijanto (Indonesia)
------------------------------
FROM THE NOTEBOOK
Beyond blue
hydrangea blooms
home sweet home
--Yili Zhou (China)
The rainy season is a sad time for the haikuist, who left her home to come study in Japan. She wrote her poem on a cloth letter to add to a mosaic that she is sewing with 100 other students, including Daiki Mitsutomi in Kagoshima who wrote the following haiku:
Fundraising
one yen plus one yen . ..
tsunami
When completed on July 16, the Day of the Sea (Marine Day), they plan to contribute their colorful quilt to organizers of the Canada Tohoku Japan Cloth Letters project, who aim to cheer up children at schools across northern Japan. In the United Kingdom, Alan Summers admires the handiwork of a grieving woman.
Quilting bee--
expert with the needle
she forgets her loss
Hidehito Yasui doesn’t want to be late for a gathering with friends in Osaka. An unwanted visitor interrupted the quilting work Bernhard Kopf was doing.
All members
at the final quilting bee
on schedule
* * *
Buzzing and slapping
bees at a
quilting bee
The following haiku contributed by Maeve O'Sullivan in Ireland was originally published in Initial Response (Alba Publishing, 2011):
the giant bee
flies past the old man . ..
embroidering
Bulgarian poet Lili Racheva believes the rain likes to play tricks on us. Cumulonimbus clouds rolled in while Priscilla Lignori was getting ready to do some gardening in New York. Barbara Taylor needs rain for her crops in Australia, but not too much.
Rain drops
orchestrate
in the summer night
* * *
On my one day off--
rainwater fills the birdbath
to overflowing
* * *
Barley fields
brimming with floodwaters
a wasted year
Sue Bakewell reaches for candy floss in the skies above her home in Markdale, Ontario, Canada. School’s out for Raj K. Bose in Honolulu. Rina Takizawa heads for the beach in Hokkaido.
Lying on the grass
slowly reforming cumulus clouds
merry-go-round of summer dreams
* * *
Teacher’s voice fades
escaping to distant places
in my dreams
* * *
Summer has come!
Time for the seashore!
with gushing smiles
John Zheng studies at a university in Mississippi. His dessert is a dream come true for ice-cream lovers who have tasted baked Alaska: White cake topped with ice cream and meringue, quickly browned in a hot oven then set aflame with a splash of cognac.
Summer dream--
a dish of fried ice cream
in Alaska
---------------------------------------------------
The next issues of the Asahi Haikuist Network appear July 6 and 20. Readers are invited to send haiku about the sea 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 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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