if there were more fools who count stars...
--Mirela Brailean (Iasi, Romania)

* * *

night bus
to the Milky Way--
leaving alone
--Florin Golban (Bucharest, Romania)

* * *

heavy traffic
the bus driver unscrews
his thermos
--Stephen Toft (Lancaster, England)

* * *

faint scent
of the night sky--
forsythias
--Helga Stania (Ettiswil, Switzerland)

* * *

after hunting
a tent in the mountains
full of starlight
--Goran Gatalica (Zagreb, Croatia)

* * *

two humans
against a small mosquito
there is no clean war
--Marie Derley (Brussels, Belgium)

* * *

A pine droplet falls
Two carps waving their tails
under the glare
--Jaspe “wormwood” Martinez (Hidalgo, Mexico)

* * *

north of the pond
likely in quicksand
his soul abides
--Richard Bailly (Fargo, North Dakota)

* * *

solitude
a walk in the snow
of spring
--Susan Bonk Plumridge (London, Ontario)

* * *

ma ties an old
lady’s shoelace and off she
waddles confidently
--Jerome Berglund (Minneapolis, Minnesota)

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

Parisian party...
James Joyce and Marcel Proust
at a loss for words
--Ed Bremson (Raleigh, North Carolina)

The haikuist celebrated Bloomsday on June 16, wondering why “Proust and Joyce met at a party but didn’t have much to say to each other.” James Joyce’s 1922 novel, “Ulysses,” recounted the story of Leopold Bloom’s life in Dublin on June 16, 1904. Luciana Moretto regretted not living life to the fullest in Treviso, Italy.

unstamped letter
never sent
I daren’t bloom

Reading “Ulysses” in Jibou, Romania, Mircea Moldovan was inspired to compose a haiku about “the beach scene” in the 100-year-old story that he said was “full of eroticism.”

pink twilight
beyond the beach rock
wild flowers

Tomislav Maretic wrote to say that “his uncle Zvonimir lived in the same house” in which James Joyce resided in Pula, Croatia, from 1904-1905. Every morning the Irish author reportedly walked under a Roman arch to get to a tall building where he worked as an English teacher. This smooth flowing poetic line from Joyce’s “Dubliners” that was published in 1914 inspired Maretic’s haiku: “The light music of whisky falling into glasses made an agreeable interlude.”

music of whisky
falling into glasses--
Arch of the Sergii

Vandana Parashar started her day early in Panchkula, India: a crack in the egg and the dawn breaks.

Aki Yoshida cooked up her morning haiku in Sapporo while recalling the children’s tale of Sambo, a boy who used his wits to survive after being stalked by tigers. Published in 1899 by Grant Richards (the firm that launched James Joyce’s classics), the book by Scottish author Helen Bannerman was a hit in Japan when released in 1953. Still, the title was subsequently removed from bookshelves in 1988 for its racist stereotyping.

four tigers running
round and round all melted in
my pancake breakfast

Charlie Smith shared this haiku with colleagues at the 50th reunion of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

novel spike protein
yet another new mutant
tired of this novel

Minami Koyanagawa posed for a photo during her final year as a creative writing student at Hokusei Gakuen University in Sapporo.

a quiet classroom
chairs arranged in the gym,
white graduation album

Keith Evetts enjoyed a charming day. Derley celebrated the day when her “step-little-daughter turned ten years old” in Ath, Belgium. Marilyn Ward took a deep breath in Scunthorpe, U.K.

spring
the blarney
in her

* * *

Easter Day
under Ella’s T-shirt
two little eggs

* * *

twelve candles
on the birthday cake
aqua icing

In his stress management guidebook, “Mindfulness on the Go” (2014), Padraig O’Morain recommended a 5-7-5 count as a breathing technique: breathe in slowly while counting to five, then breathe out while counting to seven, and so on “for a few minutes a few times a day.” Here is O’Morain’s haiku sent from Dublin dedicated to the Irish poet James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (1882-1941).

on every bookshelf
Ulysses unfinished
yes I will read it yes

At last month’s Tech Games hosted for alumni during commencement ceremonies at MIT,
Smith’s class of mathematicians won the 5-7-5 haiku event for this haiku.

discarded facemasks
daily litter recycling
squirrel nest futons

Satoru Kanematsu managed a 3-5-3 count despite catching a spring cold that made it hard to breathe.

Vitamins--
counting syllables
spring fever

At the end of a long day in 1897, Natsume Soseki wrote this haiku about exhaling just before leaving his friend Masaoka Shiki behind in Matsuyama: nagaki hi ya akubi utsushite wakare yuku.

Long spring day
an exchange of yawns…
on our way

Prijono Tjiptoherijanto bid a tearful adieu in Jakarta, Indonesia.

teary-eyed
departing yesterday
an old and true friend

Golban didn’t seem to mind his late commute. Evetts camped overnight. Berglund enjoyed a Sunday drive.

night bus
on air
rhythm and blues

* * *

spring sunrise
a little bit of dew
gets in the eyes

* * *

sundays no one’s on
the road, never difficult
getting in to church

Carmela Marino counted seven days from Palm Sunday through Holy Saturday in Rome, Italy.

waiting
between seeds and buds
seven sunsets

* * *

Holy week
ants attend the funeral
of a seed

Luciana Moretto revitalized by listening to the rhythmic waves of Franz Schubert’s 1823 composition “To Sing on the Water” and by reading the swansong poem of the same name by Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg-Stolberg. Kanematsu rejoiced.

a miserable spring
the Lied “Auf dem Wasser”
clarity vibe

* * *

Hydrangeas--
planet of ours blessed
with water

Instead of water, Maretic suggested drinking a Croatian red grape wine or Irish whiskey to celebrate the end of a long day. Mario Massimo Zontini drank a sunlit ruby red wine in Parma, Italy.

drinking with Bloom
near the Arch of the Sergii--
Jameson or Teran?

* * *

home from hospital
the spring light in the kitchen:
I drink a glass of wine

Slobodan Pupovac watched a contender bite the dust in Zagreb, Croatia. Carl Brennan was aghast by his marauding cat in New York. Elena Malec mistook a blossom for a butterfly in Irvine, California. Kiyoshi Fukuzawa was puzzled in Tokyo.

rodeo
the clumsy cowboy
swallows dust

* * *

Manfully he storms
the fortress of blown leaves,
beheads the mole-king

* * *

collector frustration
snatching the net
off the lilac bush

* * *

Hunt for pure honey
how’d it reach the food counter
from the Ukraine

Christopher Calvin found no answers in Kota Mojokerto, Indonesia.

meandering clouds
imaginations... thoughts
why won’t they stop?

Richard Evanoff looked up to his favorite news carrier in Tokyo for a sign that something might be about to happen.

A blackbird
overhead--
my herald.

Isabella Kramer likely enjoyed a wonderland-like tea party in front of her house in Nienhagen, Germany: milky clouds finding Alice in my teacup.

Tsanka Shishkova implied there’s no place like her home in Sofia, Bulgaria: freshly cut meadow brings out the sense of home.

Jessica Allyson finally got home after a long day in Ottawa, Ontario.

housecats...
I turn my key and
scolding begins

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

Meandering musings at http://www.asahi.com/ajw/special/haiku/. The next issues of the Asahi Haikuist Network appear on July 1, 15 and 29. You are invited to send a haiku related to Africa, Asia or Australia 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).