two bottles spend the night with old friend

--Neni Rusliana (Bandung, Indonesia)

* * *

night and day

they touched like two glasses

of white and red wine

--Ljiljana Dobra (Sibenik, Croatia)

* * *

scratch scratch scrape the toast

crush m’ pain excerpt from

life on a knife-edge

--Mike Gallagher (Lyreacrompane, Ireland)

* * *

stony path

something i forgot

along the way

--Thorsten Neuhaus (Munster, Germany)

* * *

downslope

long rivers laze

as though it still were summer

--Lysa Collins (British Columbia)

* * *

from high pastures

to the trough

cows at dusk

--Luciana Moretto (Treviso, Italy)

* * *

Rain scent--

lightning fleeting

from the mountain

--Jorge Alberto Giallorenzi (Buenos Aires, Argentina)

* * *

no mountains in sight

clouds lie on the horizon

Alexandria

--Junko Saeki (Suginami, Tokyo)

* * *

moon over Rhodes

knight armor glints

in the ancient city

--Tsanka Shishkova (Sophia, Bulgaria)

* * *

sword hilt gleaming

each ear cocked

trade talks and curt bows

--Don Krieger (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)

------------------------------

FROM THE NOTEBOOK

------------------------------

monsoon drizzle ...

grandpa teaches me

Sicilian Defence

--Kanchan Chatterjee (India)

The haikuist moved a black pawn into gambit position at the start of a chess game. Ingrid Baluchi teased Japanese ghouls in North Macedonia.

throwing candies

to stall the stranger--

Kuchisake-onna

In East Brunswick, Pat Geyer raised a glass to cheer the free-spirited Greek god of wine, fertility and drama. Kiyoshi Fukuzawa turned his back to a stouter, drunken image of the god.

bare Dionysus ...

in your madness you drink

cups of red wine moon

* * *

Bacchus

no longer my friend--

bottled wine sleeps long

Patrick Sweeney shared fellowship with a solemn Alcoholics Anonymous support group. Lucy Whitehead shared a homemade wine of fermented wild brambles.

church basement A.A. meeting:

the Lord’s Prayer

in the Lord’s voice

* * *

blackberry wine

a hiccup from my friend

under the table

Ian Willey offered a toast to celebrate a birthday in Ohio: “I have a fondness for this season, as the days shorten and the nights take on a chill. Time moves so fast these days.” Mitsuko Robertson took it slow in California. John Zheng celebrated his birthday on the road.

another birthday ...

the days are definitely

getting shorter

* * *

Birthday card from old classmate

Best wines get better with

Age

* * *

birthday road trip

winding through mountains

to death valley

In this one-line haiku, John Hamley cautions against drinking while driving: Brazilian speed bump--prone policeman lies in wait.

Driving down the freeway, Eric Kimura found the end of a rainbow in Hawaii. Karen Harvey blushed in Wales.

Lightly skipping trees

Rainbow dusts roofs with color

Racing me down the road

* * *

sipping burgundy

I watch the colour

rise in her cheeks

Zheng’s mailbox was full to the brim and fruits had ripened by the time he returned home to Itta Bena, Mississippi.

reading your card

a big bite

at a juicy pear

Madhuri Pillai’s mates in Melbourne, Australia, differ in opinion as far apart as apples and oranges. “After a long drive to the northeast corner of the lower U.S.-states and back” home to St. Peter, Minnesota, Horst Ludwig drank liquid gold.

school buddies

more chalk and cheese

in their autumn years

* * *

on the golden plate

fruit, bread -- beside it, golden,

in a chalice, wine

Farmers in Japan are no longer able to ship blemish-free fruits for their picky customers. Global warming, heavy rains and typhoons have ended the traditional practice of hand-covering each and every blossom in the orchard with protective paper. Masumi Orihara remarked such “wakeari apples taste great … and can make a perfect pie.” Though bruised, Satoru Kanematsu purchased red and yellow Braeburn apples at the grocers before returning home in the lingering heat.

Damaged a little

apples, sweet and sour

good for pie

* * *

Discount sale

bashful apples from

New Zealand

* * *

The alley

sprinkled with water

women chat

Roberta Beach Jacobson worked for tips in Indianola, Iowa. Ezio Infantino was satisfied with a sommelier in Tricarico, Italy.

uncorking wine

for the rich

and famous

* * *

a big tip

to the waiter--

red wine

“In absolute peace,” Angela Giordano said she sleuthed through the woods in Italy searching for mushrooms, knowing that she was not alone. Looking for mushrooms on Mountain Top, New South Wales, Barbara A. Taylor experienced an olfactory hallucination--the dreaded smell of phantoms.

rustling leaves--

singing in the fog

of a scops owl

* * *

rocky mountains high

in vanilla-scented nights

spotlights on spoors

Drinking on a mountainside bordering Italy and Slovenia, Luciana Moretto recalled bitter fights “all through the Great War. But,” she added, “the red color and flavor of a glass of wine during dinner puts me in a good mood.” Tsanka Shishkova celebrated a homecoming. Serhiy Shpychenko poured a fresh, crisp glass of wine made from this year’s grape harvest in Kyiv, Ukraine. Teiichi Suzuki “thinks that the taste of wine depends on the situation.”

vineyards in the sun

on Sabotino

blood-red grapes

* * *

again together

as years ago

red wine in glasses

* * *

a leaf falls

I taste with my father

a young wine

* * *

New moon--

feeling the wine’s weight

in my mouth

Did you know that haiku bars in Matsuyama concoct drinks to match the haiku patrons compose? Kanematsu got rice wine. Mario Massimo Zontini received a rich, red Chianti. John Hawkhead was in time for a last order.

Warmed sake

old pals talk and talk

a long night

* * *

drinking wine

we talk about the good old times--

glass after glass

* * *

falling over

the sudden pull of gravity

a glass of wine

Fukuzawa looks forward to a vintage year. Lothar M. Kirsch merited a full glass of Bordeaux for a rhymed verse.

Old as I am

the corkscrew works only

on my birthday

* * *

Red grape vine

La Rose Haut Brion--fine wine

rotten, don’t whine

Steliana Voicu handled an intensely golden-colored chardonnay that had been mellowed in an oak barrel to toast a young couple a long-life together. She noted that a 900-year-old oak tree is still growing in Suceava, Romania.

vineyard wedding--

the moon turns

into chardonnay

Liz Gibbs deliciously shares the intoxicating glow from her garden on a warm afternoon in Calgary, Alberta. Pat Geyer savored a pale, straw-colored wine made from whitish green grapes. L’Aglianico is a dark and full-bodied wine cultivated from vines on the volcanic soils that Angela Giordano and her family enjoy drinking at music clubs.

my garden

through a chardonnay

warm summer haze

* * *

Riesling ...

young and pure

seldom oaked

* * *

wine-tasting

a sip of Aglianico

jazz music

Julia Guzman likely sang Robert Burns’ 1788 poem Auld Lang Syne in Cordoba, Argentina. Hifsa Ashraf sat by a crackling fire in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

the last song

around the campfire--

faces of the departed

* * *

fireside story

every shadow

becomes alive

Supported by the Asahi Shimbun, the 9th Matsuyama International Photo-Haiku Contest is currently accepting online submissions. Contest judges Seiichi Morimura, Itsuki Natsui and David McMurray will select 12 prize-winning haiku. Enter here for a chance to celebrate: http://www.matsuyamahaiku.jp/contest/index_en.html

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Cheers! Vintage haiku at http://www.asahi.com/ajw/special/haiku/ The next issue of the Asahi Haikuist Network appears Nov. 29. Readers are invited to send haiku about first snow 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 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 featuring graduate students 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 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: "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).