summer vaccine and virus war in our veins
--Elancharan Gunasekaran (Singapore)

* * *

swarm of cicadas
developers and testers
debugging in the war room
--Amrutha Prabhu (Bengaluru, India)

* * *

Dark shelter--
a firefly keeps the light on
distant war
--Kiyoshi Fukuzawa (Tokyo)

* * *

war sound--
my neighbors cancel
their vacation
--Isabella Kramer (Nienhagen, Germany)

* * *

over
the war zone
rainbow
--Roberta Beach Jacobson (Indianola, Iowa)

* * *

in between the U.S.
and Canadian Falls
double rainbows
--Marshall Hryciuk (Toronto, Ontario)

* * *

School trip
rainbow above the falls
of Niagara
--Dejan Ivanovic (Lazarevac, Serbia)

* * *

border river
from shore to shore
a rainbow
--Nikolay Grankin (Krasnodar, Russia)

* * *

more prayers for peace
over from the Middle East
eclipse of the moon
--Francis Attard (Marsa, Malta)

* * *

apocalypse
cicada years later
humans emerge
--J.L. Huffman (Wilkesboro, North Carolina)

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

mother’s peace center
she wills me her wish
to save the world
--Kath Abela Wilson (Pasadena, California)

The haikuist’s mother wanted to create a space where non-warring people could unite. Before passing away at 95, she made origami cranes, read Michelle Obama’s memoir, and praised the former U.S. president’s visit to Hiroshima Memorial Peace Park. Tsanka Shishkova admired the old trees on the north side of the park known as the bearers of hope.

Hiroshima...
six gingko trees keep the memory
of the atomic bombing

Sweltering in scorching heat, Satoru Kanematsu was mesmerized by the glaring eyes of Olympian-sized muscular guardian deities at the gate of the Buddhist temple where he prayed for those who died in the world’s first atomic bombing on this day in 1945. Ryan Joshua Mahindapala burned with jealousy in Singapore. Writing from Sibenik, Croatia, Danijela Grbelja suggested some advice.

Silent rage
of two Deva Kings
A-bomb Day

* * *

the moon burning red
blood boiling with fuming rage
truth engulfed me whole

* * *

cicada’s song--
some things you say
some things you don’t

Irena Szewczyk passed a difficult afternoon in Warsaw, Poland. Melanie Vance started praying at the first ring in Dallas, Texas.

fighting with mosquitoes
at the war memorial
decline of the day

* * *

peace bell strikes
again and again
gale warning

Writing from Hildesheim in Germany, Beate Conrad offered this one-line tribute to the concrete barrier that closed off East Berlin from the West on Aug. 13, 1961: Berlin Wall a long question’s end.

Ken Sawitri lamented the foolhardy in Blora, Indonesia. Writing from Novi Sad, Serbia, Zoran Doderovic recalled the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 during the Kosovo War. Carl Brennan read a ghost story in New York.

rainbow...
at wartime they build
the bridge

* * *

midnight lightning
the fear is hidden
behind the blinds

* * *

Tales of disaster
suffocation by coal dust
miners’ restless ghosts

Teiichi Suzuki witnessed a mysterious phosphorous light phenomenon. According to folklore, spirits called “onibi” will rise from the corpses of animals and humans if they are abandoned outside to warm on the ground in the rain. Germina Melius strikes fear with a family ghost story from Saint Lucia. Roberta Beach Jacobson recounted a tragedy in Indianola, Iowa.

Old execution grounds--
a will-o’-the wisp burns
in the night rain

* * *

frozen corpse
a speechless man ignores
his mother

* * *

snuffed out in its prime
another life
that matters

Masumi Orihara penned a haiku while watching a rerun of the 1962 film “Lawrence of Arabia.” Set in the Middle East during World War I, the protagonist played by Peter O’Toole summed up the reason he liked the desert by saying, “It’s clean.” The war story ended badly, and in those desert ruins there still lingers the wistful specter of what might have been if only Lawrence had been listened to.

Sandstorm
everything clean
and just hot

Rob Watkins compiled a short collection of his haiku penned in Newfoundland. Sleuthing through his “notebooks from many years ago,” he submitted this haiku with “the end of WWII as the primary focus.” Kanematsu jumped at the sight of department store mannequins. Richard Thomas likely replied “just looking” to the clerk in Plymouth, U.K. Szewczyk stopped at the edge of park filled with the national flower of Poland -- a WWI remembrance symbol.

fall alders stripped bare,
a Vietnam veteran
spots a redpoll’s nest

* * *

Detached limbs
the naked dummies
change fashions

* * *

in the hat department
the sea sponge crab
motionless

* * *

a condom
the edge of the poppy field
lonely walk

With a contemplative frown in Tokyo, Murasaki Sagano circled a rockery filled with tiny star-shaped flowers.

Thoughtful walk
once, twice, thrice around
saxifrage

Jay Friedenberg hunkered down in Riverdale, New York. Kanematsu’s soul shined today. Eva Limbach retreated to Saarbrucken, Germany.

counting days...
rows of black cloud
recede the sky

* * *

Hibiscus:
just one day’s glory
in the sun

* * *

summer retreat
alone
with the cicada’s cry

Listening from the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia, Germina Melius is all ears for the Tokyo Olympics--scheduled to end the day before Mountain Day. Kanematsu worried for the athletes in the relentless summer heat. Vandana Parashar’s ears ached in Panchkula, India. Eugeniusz Zacharski spirits rose while ascending South Peak in Nepal, the fourth-highest mountain in the world.

mountains of words
my ears agape
watching the elevator

* * *

Boosting up
Olympic fever
Tokyo heat

* * *

cicada’s cry
the harshness of words
I never understood

* * *

Lhotse climb
my shadow
leaving me

Writing in North Carolina, Huffman referred to a play by Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) in which two characters waited for someone who never showed up. As a resistance fighter in WWII, the playwright experienced the agony of waiting for help to arrive. The title of his work became a metaphor for humanity waiting for a revelation of God’s presence in the midst of destruction.

Godot
still waiting your arrival
unfulfilled hope

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

Find peace at http://www.asahi.com/ajw/special/haiku/. The next issues of the Asahi Haikuist Network appears August 20. Readers are invited to send haiku about a cool drink 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).