ASAHI HAIKUIST NETWORK/ David McMurray | The Asahi Shimbun: Breaking News, Japan News and

retreating sun–a farmer’s shuffling steps through wheatfields
–John Zheng (Ittabena, Mississippi)

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Culture Day–
efficient AI
sheds no tears
–Satoru Kanematsu (Nagoya)

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the local doctor’s
carmine-red bitter potion…
ill on a journey
–Masumi Orihara (Atsugi, Kanagawa)

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piercing the veil
between this world and the next
MRI machine
–Joshua St. Claire (York, Pennsylvania)

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crescent moon
reminds me of my dad
working in fields
–Xiaoou Chen (Kunming, China)

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“Hands-off please”
a message from God…
lilies in the fog
–Kiyoshi Fukuzawa (Tokyo)

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Sultry day
a train drifts into
the station
–Teiichi Suzuki (Osaka)

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This chrysanthemum
a riddle wrapped
in sorrow
–Murasaki Sagano (Tokyo)

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my map
crumpled by the wind–
moon gazing
–Ana Drobot (Bucharest, Romania)

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the monsoon slices
pitch-black of the backwaters–
Malabar moonrise
–Monica Kakkar (Kerala, India)

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FROM THE NOTEBOOK
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Halloween
I pull out grandma’s
old porcelain dolls
–Wai Mei Wong (Toronto, Canada)

The haikuist’s family celebrated a pagan holiday on Oct. 31. Stephen J. DeGuire was lucky to witness a rarely blooming flower–although it reeks of death–while visiting the San Diego Botanic Gardens in California.

no scarecrow
or electric fence
corpse flowers

In Mexico, the Day of the Dead is hosted at this time of year. Superstitions there dictate that when a moth enters the home of someone who is ill, the ailing person will die. Govind Joshi was startled by a moth on the ground in Dehradun, India.

with his death–
leaving the earth
a white moth

With her eye on a three-day moon, Kakkar virtually traveled to the Thar Desert to experience one of the largest salt marshes in the world by listening to “Hindustani classical music, folk music, dances, festivals.” She has also “traveled to Nepal for a pilgrimage as a child, and … is familiar with the life of the Sherpas … and experienced tea at tea stalls, and hospitality at roadside food stalls.”

eyebrow like a moth
glances from a camel’s back–
the Great Rann of Kutch

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time-poor in tea stall–
a sherpa in offseason
eyes the moon’s ascent

Steliana Cristina Voicu experienced this moment while seated in the warm autumn sun of Ploiesti, Romania.

pouring matcha…
the way the sunlight falls
on her shoulder

Perhaps facing towards Mount Fuji from his seat at a table in Accra, Ghana, Justice Joseph Prah raised his warm cup of green tea with two hands. Observing from St. Louis park in Minnesota, Archie Carlos admired a gesture of respect given to elders.

sipping my tea
in Africa
taste of Shizuoka

* * *

Mount Fuji
the way he bows
to grandfather

Joshi recalled seeing the captain of a ship acknowledge assistance to navigate a busy bay.

harbor pilot
exchanging a bow
Tokyo wan

Giuliana Ravaglia found her identity when she penned this line in flight over Bologna, Italy: unattached–I am air in the wind

Suzuki celebrated Culture Day in Japan today, by suggesting that flowers carry an unspoken passion inside their folds. An image of the chrysanthemum appears on coins, passports and official seals, and it is a symbol of the emperor and the imperial family.

Flower arrangement
freshly cut chrysanthemum
its warmth left behind

Urszula Marciniak attended a language class in Lodz, Poland.

learning Japanese
more and more chrysanthemums
in front of the school

Arvinder Kaur pondered her legacy in Chandigarh, India.

rain wet
the footprints
we leave

Ed Bremson is perplexed by what is happening to the neighborhood in Raleigh, North Carolina. Kanematsu suggested that the rewilding of abandoned properties can become picturesque.

ducks and geese standing
on the islands that emerge
as their pond dries up

* * *

Cheering up
unsold vacant lots
foxtail ears

Alexander Groth composed a final scene in Neuenkirchen, Germany.

swan song–
his trembling hand
when he writes “hope”

Mario Massimo Zontini held a heavenly vision of Parma, Italy. Suzuki suffered from heatstroke.

hospital room–
I can only imagine
where the moon is

* * *

Hospital stay–
turning off autumn light
into unknown darkness

Yasir Farooq felt enraptured, though he may have been teased in Karachi, Pakistan. Ann Magyar noted a lingering warmth in Boston, Massachusetts.

full moon
after a glimpse
a few glances

* * *

sturgeon moon
in the park Macbeth
wears a tee shirt

DeGuire composed this haiku at the end of the road in Los Angeles, California.

cul-de-sac
only permits parking
fireworks show

Andrew Neuman is from La Crosse, Wisconsin, but refers to Tokyo in this haiku as his second home.

Golden autumn moon
Hangs low over the city
Humid nights; can’t sleep

Natalia Kuznetsova asked for peace and quiet in Moscow, Russia.

Harvest Moon…
please, do not disturb
soldiers’ dreams

Mircea Moldovan sang this line for an old pal in Letca, Romania: a guitar, some friends–one less–autumn rain

Angela Giordano’s eyes followed a shining line on the Mediterranean Sea: in the middle of the sea the moon guides the journey of immigrants

Junko Saeki is cautious about the harvesting of seafood from the oceans around Japan suggesting it is “better to be safe than sorry.”

robust appetite
free scallops for school lunches…
yet, Minamata

Forced to live a frugal life during these inflationary times, Yutaka Kitajima nonetheless cut blue wildflowers for old friends who rest in peace at a cemetery in Joetsu, Niigata Prefecture. Kanematsu knows not to cut the ephemeral blue flowering vines that grace his garden and hide old wood.

A cool breeze…
a single gentian
to each grave

* * *

Draped in blue
with morning glories–
rotting fence

The outbreak of war made Ryan Joshua Mahindapala shiver in Singapore.

calamity downpour
rain shivers cold echoing sounds
of disembarking souls

John Hawkhead submitted this poem from Bradford-on-Avon, England.

infant funeral
the hush of snow falling
into an ocean

Randall Herman reflected on goldfish in Victoria, Texas.

cloudy dew…
a jeweled koi
in a clear pond

Drobot reflected on the world as dew rose from the ground and condensed on her cold hands.

world map–
a drop of dew
held in my hand

A lay Buddhist priest, Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828) strove to compose haiku that were not attached to worldly possessions. When his 2-year-old daughter Sato succumbed to smallpox in 1819, however, he reworked an earlier elegy for a dead son using these repetitive words to express a short-lived attachment: tsuyu no yo wa tsuyu no yo nagara sari nagara

While this dewdrop world
is only a dewdrop world
yet it is, it is

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The next issue of the Asahi Haikuist Network appears on Nov. 17. Readers are invited to send haiku related to a sad song 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).

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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).