The lonely beauty
smokes outside the library,
no one dares approach
--Brian Robertson (Toronto, Canada)
* * *
Gritty warm water--
screeches of gulls splash
into the waves
--Craig Steele (Pennsylvania)
* * *
Diving with the sun
indulgent cormorant
plunge beneath waves
--Hamish Montgomery (Scotland)
* * *
Old seagull
stoically
wave after wave after wave
--Raj K. Bose (Honolulu)
* * *
Standing alone
teenage boys surfing
life near evening
--Prijono Tjiptoherijanto (Indonesia)
* * *
Beach morning:
watching mosquitoes
mating
--Alicia Hilton (Illinois)
* * *
Babbling brook
iris nods
the first damselfly kiss
--Junko Yamada (Kamakura, Kanagawa)
* * *
Star Festival
baby looks to the sky
from mother’s arms
--Motoko Amatsuji (Hyogo)
* * *
Small ships
under the airplane
so (s)low
--T.D. Ginting (Indonesia)
* * *
Debris
above us
the sky
--Heinz Schneemann (Berlin, Germany)
-------------------------
FROM THE NOTEBOOK
-------------------------
Black sea
how black
I am?
--Ernesto P. Santiago (Phillippines)
The haikuist peers into the mirror surface of the sea and frames a rhetorical question about his own identity.
Blue ocean
colored red
Tarawa Atoll
Minoru Nakamura recalls World War II, when the central Pacific island of Tarawa was the scene of the bloody Battle of Tarawa between the United States marines and Japanese soldiers entrenched on the atoll. On Nov. 22, 1943, after 76 hours of intense fighting that took the lives of 6,000 men, the seas were tainted with blood.
Bernhard Kopf lives in land-locked Austria.
Trying to imagine the sea
on a grey park bench
in Vienna
Yutaka Kitajima laments how land developers have truncated his favorite forest. Michael Corr’s favorite lake has been enjoyed for generations.
This woods path
leads to nowhere now
summer grass
* * *
Lake students
some grandfather’s ones
paddling canoes
Neal Woolery traveled by car from the farmlands of Iowa to the northeastern states. He observes, “the seemingly endless forests of Pennsylvania--impressed, and then somewhat overwhelmed.” He ended up having a hard time seeing the trees for the forest. Chen-ou Liu reflects while driving away from the rainy West Coast of Canada. He lives in Ontario. Djurdja Vukelic Rozic watches passengers disembark from a ship that crossed the Black Sea.
Worlds, worlds, worlds
every leaf on every tree
speeding past
* * *
Foggy memories
in my rear-view mirror
the Pacific
* * *
Docking ferry--
a gull with broken wing
leaves first
Martin Gottlieb Cohen caught this one-line haiku on the sea: through the glow of a lantern squid’s ink
Jeffrey Aldrich and Vania Stefanova find messages in bottles thrown to the sea.
At the ocean shore
a plastic bottle reflects
the summer moonlight
* * *
No letters...
the sea brings ashore
one more empty bottle
Ramona Linke sketches a familiar seascape in the Caribbean. Located downwind, or in the lee of the prevailing winds, Dominica, Guadeloupe, Montserrat, Antigua, Barbuda, St. Kitts, Nevis, and Anguilla are referred to as Leeward Islands because a sailing vessel can directly reach their shores. Murasaki Sagano floats on a seaward breeze.
Leeward Islands
beyond the sea fog
early sounds
* * *
Scented land breeze
toward the sea
billowing
Ernesto P. Santiago describes a fisherman rolling in the Philippine Sea and Teiichi Suzuki etches his deep lines.
In bare feet,
the sailor’s hornpipe--
sea waves
* * *
Salt sea air
a fisherman
deep wrinkled face
Satoru Kanematsu writes ominously about the recent restarting of nuclear power reactors in Fukui Prefecture. Remembering the meltdown of the nuclear plant in Fukushima after it was hit by a tsunami on March 11, 2011, as well as the Aug. 6 and 9, 1945, bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he rallies haikuists to compose haiku with the theme, “no more nukes!”
Sunset glow
nuclear power plants
restarting
-----------------------------------------------
The next issues of the Asahi Haikuist Network appear Aug. 3, 17 and 31. Readers are invited to send haiku about radiation 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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