watching war movies child of peacetime
--Pippa Phillips (St. Louis, Missouri)

* * *

late snow...
a couple of street kids
playing war
--Eva Limbach (Saarbrucken, Germany)

* * *

I like it when the
old-timers put their hands
up in the air
--Jerome Berglund (Minneapolis, Minnesota)

* * *

Sunday socializing
grandpa and grandson crawl
under the table
--Slobodan Pupovac (Zagreb, Croatia)

* * *

line of demarcation
trees turn green
on both sides
--Serhiy Shpychenko (Kyiv, Ukraine)

* * *

war memory
on the yellowed stamp
two soldiers
--Francoise Maurice (Draguignan, France)

* * *

emerald eyes glow
my daughter finds her treasure
a four leaf clover
--June Read (Calgary, Alberta)

* * *

emeralds...
dead tears
my mother’s
--Giuliana Ravaglia (Bologna, Italy)

* * *

same
green saree...
i smell mom
--Devoshruti Mandal (Varanasi, India)

* * *

three generations
mother, daughter, granddaughter
a loop of jade
--Angi Holden (Cheshire, England)

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

strolling to the hospital
in his pocket
a scent of lemon soap
--Padraig O’Morain (Dublin, Ireland)

The haikuist dedicated this haiku to the memory of James Joyce, who wrote “Ulysses,” a long story about the events on June 16, 1904, that were experienced by a man walking the streets of Dublin. O’Morain likes to stroll. He described reaching a haiku-like moment of euphoria on his website, “on a sunny Dublin afternoon in the 1980s … I abandoned my desk in The Irish Times--not an unusual event--and went for a stroll in the grounds of Trinity College … and watched the game of cricket--a game, I might add, about which I knew nothing. I felt wonderful as I practiced my mindfulness. I was filled with the deepest sense of peace and happiness I had ever known. I have never forgotten the experience.”

Tsanka Shishkova spent the day walking in the woods with a best friend.

old Irish setter
happily wagging his tail
spring hunting

Sean Erin McMurray was pulled along the streets of Brossard, Quebec, by his new dog, Mickey.

Nose to the pavement
covered in pink petals,
the beagle leads on

Susan Bonk Plumridge trekked through London, Ontario.

footprints
the steps of a journey
multiply

As it turned out, C.X. Turner wasn’t walking alone in Birmingham, England.

I find your eyes
amongst the blue
wild geranium

Stoianka Boianova walked and walked and walked in Sofia, Bulgaria. Daniela Misso’s thoughts lie far away from San Gemini, Italy. Satoru Kanematsu tried the best he could to keep explaining.

baby with walker
and grandmother with walker
walking in the park

* * *

faraway mom--
shades of green
in the valley

* * *

Sprouting grass--
asking why and why
little girl

In an essay called “Haiku” published in 1893 sharing his idle thoughts on literature, Masaoka Shiki suggested European-style poems about complicated and confusing human affairs need a lot of words to explain. For example, Junko Saeki originally submitted this long haiku, admitting “I was wordy in my haiku, so that I could fully express its background.” The soldiers who returned from the Pacific War (1941-1945) neither grieved openly nor shared their wartime experiences-- therefore, “their war lives on internally.”

lucky robins, always peace at themselves
former Imperial Army soldiers finally compelled to
break their long silence on their wars

Saeki was able to shorten her poem as follows:

robins at peace with themselves--
imperial army soldiers
break their long silence

Kanematsu is a cognizant grandfather. Isabella Kramer is a health-care worker in Nienhagen, Germany.

Tulip buds--
kids keep small secrets
to themselves

* * *

spring sunlight...
the little neighbor girl talks
to her invisible friend

Rose Menyon Heflin tried to explain a complicated human migration pattern in Madison, Wisconsin. Christina Chin praised the way people move about in Sarawak, Borneo.

Fertile, green pastures
Barns--broad, peeling, and lonely
The rural decline

* * *

meandering river
the good neighbours’
transport system

Sheila Barksdale referred to “the folly of smothering ancient watermeadows by building houses or unsuitable farming projects.” She rallied against the ugly physical barriers on the Severn riverbanks located to the west of her home in Gotherington, England, that, “local politicians have to promise massive amounts of money to devise.”

broken bridge
megaphone’s promise
not yet broken

Boianova invoked the activism of Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947), a Russian dedicated to the cause of preserving art and architecture during times of war.

paintings by Roerich
nature, people and God
in unity

While airing mildew out from his favorite novel by Agatha Christie, Kanematsu couldn’t help but think of the devastated village of Andrivka to the west of Kyiv, Ukraine.

Pungent smell
And Then There Were None
bombardment

Writing from Kyiv, Ukraine, Shpychenko lets readers know that many of his countrymen have lost their homes and addresses.

stamped envelope
address window
is empty

Miera Rao, a writer in northern California, notes that she “used to collect stamps as a child and was an avid letter-writer.”

Flying hundreds of miles
on edgy wings
Home to my love

While watching children ardently crayoning, Kanematsu felt the full weight of the war in the Ukraine. Mario Massimo Zontini couldn’t believe what he read in the news in Parma, Italy.

Poignant spring…
kids draw smiles on suns
not knowing

* * *

song of a blackbird--
I keep reading the same line
of the newspaper

Keith Evetts chided nationalistic pride in Thames Ditton, England.

on top
of the tallest flagpole--
bird poop

Teiichi Suzuki heard from the United Nations’ refugee agency that more than 6 million people have left Ukraine since the invasion and another 8 million have been displaced within their own country. They have lost everything, including spring. T.D. Ginting worried whether newborns would ever find a safe place to sleep, either at home or abroad.

The displaced
grabbing at spring
burnt trees in Kyiv

* * *

babies born at war--
the cries for
the neighbouring (p)residents

A retired economist in Warsaw, Marta Chocilowska noted that 3.5 million war refugees have fled across the Polish border. Masumi Orihara suggested that even though the human race repeatedly starts wars, nature remains unperturbed.

Traversing
the mossy-grown ruins
a pan flute tune

* * *

spring sun smiles
none the worse for fools
ad nauseam

Silesian haikuist Horst Ludwig paid homage to this religious poem by Johannes Scheffler (1624-1677): Stop. Where are you running? Heaven is in you. If you look for God anywhere else you’ll miss Him again and again.

In the vague morning
Angelus Silesius
Where are you running?

Ram Chandran, a corporate lawyer in Madurai, India, heard an answer to his prayers.

in deep woods
I cry ‘oh god’
all the green echo ‘yes, yes’

Shishkova experimented with word repetition.

space spiral
timelessness in infinity and
infinity in timelessness

Writing from Bucharest, Romania, Florin Golban tried his hand at the poetic technique of simile: drawing / on the steamy train window / felt like a stowaway. This 5-7-5 syllable version is more imaginative:

a finger drawing
on the steamy train window
I’m a stowaway

Hla Yin Mon was hoping to have a shared experience in Yangon, Myanmar.

young ideology--
the first job interviewer fails
to know “me”

Lilia Racheva said that although spring has arrived in Rousse, Bulgaria, she continues to pray for the war to end in Ukraine. Mirela Brailean discovered a truism in Iasi, Romania.

spring flowers
a thousand more hopes
in the sky

* * *

spring again
more beautiful
as I’m aging

Melanie Vance lost her echo in Dallas. Golban drew on his passion for rock music to play another day. Marilyn Ward searched for a lyric sheet in Scunthorpe, England.

mountain valley…
i lost my voice to the
whirling winds

* * *

love exhibition--
old man draws on the guitar
one day at a time

* * *

care home singalong
the hum of forgotten words
fade

Writing from Cordoba, Argentina, Julia Guzman brings to mind a tango and a ballad from the 1996 musical, “Evita.”

mid May--
memories of dad’s voice
in the folk songs

Berglund was at a loss for how to respond to a sound from the next unit.

cat meowing through
neighboring door, I’d feed you
if I were able

Shiki added this query to his 1893 essay on idle thoughts about literature: “I wonder … if works of sublime thought and superb spirit can germinate only from the struggle of existence and the survival of the fittest.” Viewing rows upon long rows of seedlings in Osaka, Hidehito Yasui reflected on lines forming in the muddy waters of war. Yasir Farooq contemplated his end in Karachi, Pakistan. Writing from Bangkok, Marek Kozubek wondered what will grow after the war.

Rice planting begins…
advancing green soldiers from
distant snowy ridge

* * *

thinking meadows…
there grows green
on my grave

* * *

after the war--
the green of clover
on their graves

Xenia Tran paused for a moment of silence in Nairn, Scotland.

gentle rain
tea is steeping
on the warmer

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

Read haiku by the light of fireflies at http://www.asahi.com/ajw/special/haiku/. The next issue of the Asahi Haikuist Network appears on June 17. Readers are invited to send haiku about a long day (to celebrate Bloomsday or the summer solstice), 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 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).