a woodpecker’s knocking punctures the wind
--Jacob Blumner (Flint, Michigan)

* * *

gust of wind
pecking at the stars
the flamingos
--Francoise Maurice (Draguignan, France)

* * *

Vaccine shot
into my skinny arm
summer chill
--Satoru Kanematsu (Nagoya)

* * *

lockdown rain
i finally see
a rainbow
--Mona Bedi (Delhi, India)

* * *

by storm
careless in the air
the wind travels in a breeze
--Germina Melius (Castries, Saint Lucia)

* * *

night wind
blows out no lamps
glowworms
--Chen Xiaoou (Kunming, China)

* * *

a maple leaf
in father’s diary
spring gust
--Agus Maulana Sunjaya (Tangerang, Indonesia)

* * *

After the tempest
turbulent waves acquiesce--
fishermen ship out
--Rose Mary Boehm (Lima, Peru)

* * *

cicadas’ chorus
calling nature
out of its silence
--Jodie Hawthorne (Kaohsiung, Taiwan)

* * *

cloudless...
the clothes on the line
smell like jasmine
--Leticia Sicilia (Canary Islands, Spain)

------------------------------
FROM THE NOTEBOOK
------------------------------

Blowing
in all directions...
east wind
--Pat Geyer (East Brunswick, New Jersey)

The haikuist didn’t know which way to turn. Pippa Phillips’ haiku was halved with a dash to emphasize its start and finish. Slobodan Pupovac witnessed the sky split from the sea.

the wind retires
to the north--to the south
new shoots emerge

* * *

on the horizon
separation
blue--blue

Franjo Ordanic lay low when turbulent cold winds from Croatia blew at speeds up to 200 kph along the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. Dottie Piet played a small bagpipe, a French musical wind instrument, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Spring organ
roof tiles dance
to bora’s pipe

* * *

in full bloom
the apple trees hum
a sweet musette

P.H. Fischer wondered what the neighbors were up to in Vancouver. Sherry Grant moves poetry around the world in her role as an international communities outreach officer for the New Zealand Poetry Society. Masumi Orihara marveled at the lifestyles of former television talents.

quarantine
a breeze floats petals
over the hedge

* * *

blowing kisses
over another continent
newly-weds

* * *

TV reruns
hugging and kissing
blossoms gave way to leaves

Fischer escorted his wife “to the bus stop before work. As the bus came… we had a good laugh.” Elizabeth Moura teared up in East Taunton, Massachusetts. Satoru Kanematsu spied on a private conversation for two in Nagoya. Arvinder Kaur’s relationship was unmasked in Chandigarh, India.

forgetting--
we kiss
our masks

* * *

losing time
kissing mother
through the pane

* * *

Tete a tete
no social distance
for lovebirds

* * *

social distancing
no longer hiding the reality
of our marriage

Kathleen Vasek Trocmet looked up in New Braunfels, Texas. Jay Friedenberg looked seaward from Riverdale, New York.

Vernal Falls
above monochrome rocks
a rainbow in the mist

* * *

waiting for an old friend
a lighthouse beacon
pierces the fog

Goran Gatalica spotted a buoy while beachcombing the Adriatic Sea.

strong spring wind
scattered in the foam
free-floating buoy

* * *

strong spring wind--
along the shore last night
the empty seashells

Xenia Tran saw a rescue team converge in gale-swept Scotland. Cruise ships were hard-hit by the fear of catching COVID-19 onboard. Pitt Buerken saw one get hit by high waves with long overhanging crests as it put out to sea.

blown off-course
the coastguard gathers
at the boat slip

* * *

gale force 10
a cruise ship tries to pass
the harbor entrance

Roberta Beach Jacobson wrote this one-liner while following the flow of a fringed prayer shawl in Indianola, Iowa: windy day wave of the tallit.

Adam T. Bogar watched the wind sweep along Folkestone, U.K.: storm gathering loose plastic bags all alone.

Yutaka Kitajima weathered one crisis after another in Joestu, Niigata Prefecture. Djurda Rozic’s 90-year-old neighbor in Ivanic-Grad contemplated what to do with his garden. Zdenka Mlinar wept in Zagreb. Blossoms warmed in Tsanka Shishkova’s garden in Bulgaria.

Chilly wind
tsunami follows
strange ebb tide

* * *

wrath of windstorm…
he stands by a felled apricot
in bloom

* * *

lying on the grass
a cutoff olive branch
wet wound

* * *

calm morning
sunlit broken branches
of blossoming trees

Isabella Kramer sighed and shrugged her shoulders in Nienhagen, Germany. Vandana Parashar wondered whether flowing hand-writing styles will ever return.

May wind
the up and downs
of an old love

* * *

springtide
the rise and fall
of cursive English

Masumi Orihara studied alone in London. Her third line refers to “The Stranger,” a 1942 novel by French author Albert Camus.

strong gale
up the primrose hill
L’etranger

Gatalica was grounded. Eric Kimura dedicated a haiku for “some friends who had been stranded in Hawaii because of COVID and were finally headed to Philadelphia.”

flight delay--
bathed in calm spring sea
a lone seagull

* * *

Spring is passing by
Season’s last blooms linger till,
Blown by summer winds

Gordana Vlasic hopes the rainy season washes away his hay fever. Kanematsu wiped his eyes.

Warning to allergy sufferers--
I’m waiting
for the rain

* * *

Hay fever--
no more need for tears
COVID spring

Helga Stania rejoiced in Ettiswil, Switzerland: May rain--plants turn into signs into sound.

TD Ginting remarked that everything--including rain and coronavirus preventative measures--came earlier than usual this year to Murakami, Chiba Prefecture.

The (y)early coming
of rainy season--
yet doors closed 8 p.m.

Japan occasionally suffers from drought in years when the rain front moves south rather than over the archipelago. This rain verse by Lorraine A. Padden was honorably mentioned in the 2020 Kiyoshi and Kiyoko Tokutomi Haiku Contest.

dust-covered raindrops
drought becomes its opposite
just for this moment

Djurdja Vukelic Rozic sat with her aunt on a terrace near Dubrovnik “facing the restless sea, and countless white clouds.”

scent of freesias…
with a palm tree the wind
draws clouds

Kitajima is haunted by the final moments of radio warning broadcast from a building hit by a 20-meter wave from the Bay of Shitsukawa in Miyagi Prefecture on March 11, 2011.

“Escape quick”
the tsunami drowned
her request

Bob Friedland measured springtime in Vancouver, British Columbia. Joanne van Helvoort bid a warm farewell from The Netherlands.

Pulse, the throb of flow
Beats faster, beats faster now
Green force forcing up

* * *

this gale
all through the night--
his tender goodbye

Sue Colpitts escaped by boat in Peterborough, Ontario. Rp Verlaine walked barefoot in New York.

rising floodwater
at the boat’s bow
family dog

* * *

almost naked
with only our feet wet
springtide

Marilyn Humbert read yesterday’s news in Sydney. Buerken prayed the Elbe River wouldn’t overflow.

crackling paper
…fish and chips
from the take-away

* * *

spring tide
in the Hamburg fish market hall
the fish swimming

Salil Chaturvedi was surprised by a strong sea wind off Goa, India. Suresh Babu and his fellow crew blew smoke rings in a calm spring wind off the Arabian Sea.

spring gust
the dog in the street
lifts his nose

* * *

spring prize catch...
the smoke rings
of a shared beedi

B.A. France squeezed calm spring seas off Annapolis, Maryland. Serhiy Shpychenko enjoyed a warming breeze off the Dnieper River in Kyiv, Ukraine. Daniela Misso watched skies clear up in San Gemini, Italy. Nani Mariani took a deep breath in Melbourne, Australia. Vasile Moldovan calmly awaited the return of old friends to Bucharest, Romania.

water receding
toes sunk into cold sand
...just staring

* * *

thawed patch
snowdrop heads look
in different directions

* * *

gale passed--
in a puddle, clouds
gliding away

* * *

old cottage
the wind carries the fragrance of jasmine
down the riverbank

* * *

calm sea...
ready to receive
storks and cranes

Angela Giordano was amazed by a long field of color: in the warm wind, the wildflowers bloom all together.

Stephen J. DeGuire waited idly for new life to appear in Los Angeles.

dry garden--
nothing but thumbs;
colorless

Aaron Royston thought he saw pixie dust when yellow sands from China and yellow pollen from cypress trees rained on Sollars Elementary in Aomori Prefecture. Ana Drobot watched wind erode Bucharest.

Yellow dust
a Pixar animation
of Neverland

* * *

strong spring wind--
the colours in the painting
fading away

Eva Limbach worries for a line of long-stemmed big, fluffy, fragrant garden sentinels: but for the wind white peonies.

Gabriela Popa swooned in St. Louis, Missouri. Agus Maulana Sunjaya smiled as the wind caressed Tangerang, Indonesia.

pink petals surrender
to wind’s gentle waltz
plum blossoms

* * *

drifting
on the balmy breeze
children’s laughter

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

Laugh in the rain at http://www.asahi.com/ajw/special/haiku/. The next issue of the Asahi Haikuist Network appears June 18. Readers are invited to send haiku about lightning 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 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).