today the sun on the horizon never seems to set
--Angela Giordano (Avigliano, Italy)

* * *

the road comes
to a ragged end…
tasman sea
--Sandra Simpson (Tauranga, New Zealand)

* * *

winter equinox--
in the small village
everything is ready for Inti Raymi
--Julia Guzman (Cordoba, Argentina)

* * *

boomerang flight
the sun remains
in the sky
--Slobodan Pupovac (Zagreb, Croatia)

* * *

In a Volkswagen bus
covered Australia’s edge
I have seen the world
--John S. Gilbertson (Greenville, South Carolina)

* * *

at the front window
waiting for delivery
new wheelchair for dad
--Nani Mariani (Melbourne, Australia)

* * *

Greenwashing
rinsing Sahara sand
off the hybrid car
--Lee Nash (Poitou-Charentes, France)

* * *

sand dune
a reminder to keep
moving
--Roberta Beach Jacobson (Indianola, Iowa)

* * *

july full moon
the smell of coconut oil
on your tan lines
--Francoise Maurice (Draguignan, France)

* * *

saharan romance
the perpetual blossom
of a desert rose
--Judith Gorgone (Newton, Massachusetts)

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

midnight
a world
half asleep
--Keith Evetts (Thames Ditton, England)

The haikuist lives about an hour away from the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, where the world is split in half from east to west by the mean solar time that is counted from midnight. Lorraine Carey watched glowing hemispheres float past castaway islands in the coastal waters off Kerry, Ireland.

compass jellyfish
contemplating
wind direction

In today’s column, we’ll explore seasonal references to the Earth’s southern hemisphere. Zdenka Mlinar smiled and split horizontally into two equal halves. Deborah A. Bennett halved fruit.

axis
on her lips
the smell of watermelon

* * *

after rain coolness
with a paring knife
i slice the green apple

Giordano was eager to begin a southbound journey away from Avigliano, Italy.

suitcases ready
for the first vacation--
summer solstice

Mauro Battini overheard a closed conversation in Santa Croce sull’Arno, Italy.

traveling ants--
two women talk closely
another language

Satoru Kanematsu’s 7-year-old grandchild departed alone from Yokohama on a southbound Nozomi Shinkansen (a name that means hope). The boy was old enough in comparison to similar solo adventures chronicled in the children’s picture book “Hajimete no Otsukai” and television show with the same name, but grandpa nonetheless rode a roller coaster of emotions until he hugged the boy on the train platform near his home in Nagoya.

Hope express:
grandson’s first journey
by himself

Teiichi Suzuki found himself in Osaka.

Lone traveler
I am a wandering cloud
that cloud is me

J.D. Nelson’s eyes followed a white center line that led to the day moon.

a brown rabbit hops
in the middle of the street--
moon before sunset

Mel Goldberg followed the way of haiku from San Nicholas de Ibarra, Mexico.

morning in my garden
the silver path
of a snail

Samo Kreutz looked to the east and then to the west before deciding which way to go.

crossroads...
a bumblebee leads me
into my inner self

The northbound migration of swallows to Greece from Africa at the end of winter inspired Aristotle (384-322 BC) to remark: one swallow does not make spring. The English epigrammatist John Heywood (1496-1578) changed the season word to summer to imply the warmer half of the year: One swallow does not make a summer.

This haiku by Francoise Maurice optimistically suggested that one cicada can make peace.

first cicada
in my thoughts
a world of peace

Evetts’s pet African Grey Dolly squawked after he lubricated a rusty line: after the oil silence.

a long time after
I oiled the door hinges
my parrot still squeaks

Mike Fainzilber couldn’t move in the oppressive heat of Rehovot, Israel.

even flies
cannot fly
August wind

Goldberg watched a spider that had trapped a fly in its web near the ancient Egyptian display in a museum, saying he “was impressed by the similarity.”

Egyptian mummy display
a spider
wraps a fly

Jerome Berglund suggested global warming has everyone guessing about migration.

many non-migrators
won’t see the spring
robin gambles

Helga Stania welcomed birds from afar flying northbound.

lapwings--
the movement
of long lenses

Fainzilber observed the cycle of life.

cranes in flight
an endless quest
for summer

Simona Brinzaru has heard the roaring noise of a tidal flood rushing into the mouth of the Amazon river, but she’s never heard the sound a snowstorm makes in her native Bucharest, Romania.

silent pororoca
the snow comes back
to the mountain

John Hamley lamented missing a chance to meet the indigenous wanderer Karapiru (prior to his July 16, 2021, death) whose story was documented by filmmakers in the Amazon. His name means hawk in the Awa language.

Far away
for a runny nose
I didn’t see the hawk

Sandra Simpson shivered at the sounds of new life.

icy night--
the echoing bellows
of birthing ewes

Guzman suddenly shuddered with cold in the southern hemisphere. Worried for those who dressed in required recruitment suits, Aki Yoshida shivered through a cold morning in Sapporo, Hokkaido.

winter equinox--
the frozen smile
of an abandoned puppet

* * *

job-hunting students
in sheer stockings and black pumps--
sudden spring blizzard

Curt Linderman prayed for peace.

folding one thousand
uniforms into monks robes
never again war

Ashoka Weerakkody enjoyed Asian filmdom in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Bollywood movie
heroine’s saree dances
raga wrapped around

Mona Bedi invoked traditional Southeast Asian memories of flatbread and a long scarf. Arvinder Kaur misses a colorfully embroidered shawl once peacefully worn by a bride.

rolling chapatis
mom’s old dupatta flies away
from the clothesline

* * *

war news
her bridal phulkari
back in the closet

Ken Sawitri knows what the neighbors are preparing for dinner in Blora, Indonesia. Daipayan Nair warms to his mother’s cooking and writing in Silchar, India.

hometown vein
from an open kitchen
the scent of teak leaf rice

* * *

winter morning--
coconut oil scoops melting
on ma’s stove

Peter Leroe-Munoz got used to the taste of Hawaiian scrambled eggs.

coconut oil--
missing Maui
with my eggs

Christina Chin sent worrisome news from Kuching, Sarawak, Borneo.

mother on board...
the boat capsized at
the crocodile crossing

Nash and Shishkova, respectively, paused for thought.

zen garden
petals
impaled on cacti

* * *

a wild rose
in my small garden
how to tame it

Kanematsu wrote about the rewilding of gardens at deserted homes in his neighborhood. Tsanka Shishkova admired bright, loose-fitting cotton pullovers made in West Africa.

Broken fence
tangled with wild roses
in full bloom

* * *

bright colors
of the blooming desert
dashiki

Eleonore Nickolay said her traveling friends sent “lovely photos, but one of them made me think of the excessive killing of African wildlife.”

Namibia
his smile on the selfie
with a stuffed lion

Recent droughts in Southern Africa have made things tough for Lysa Collins’s beloved white rhinoceros.

dusk--
an old rhino stumbles
to the arid water hole

Pravat Kumar Padhy may have fallen into a deep dream while resting under a tree.

Africa land--
the deep-rooted
human tree

Mona Iordan watched a documentary on the “amazing people” of Africa who “perform their traditional dance just to entertain.”

dancing with a Maasai
camera clicks accompany
another jump

Maurice clicked her camera in rhythm with traditional Australian Aboriginal musical instruments called clapsticks.

on Uluru
the song of the aborigines
the camera’s clicks

Kreutz visited Ljubljana Zoo in Slovenia. Gilbertson encountered a red flyer and her joey. On a hot day in Tokyo, Frederick Kesner recalled the red landscape of the Australian Outback. Robin Rich hopped by an immigration and customs inspector.

wildlife park...
in a kangaroo’s pouch
my lullaby

* * *

The kangaroo
hops happily around
human’s world

* * *

dusty ochred plains
sun on cloudless skies pulsate
critters scurry past

* * *

emptying pockets
before boarding the airplane
kangaroo customs

Mariani was feeling blue in Melbourne, Australia.

ocean...
blue calms the heart
low flying seagull

Barbara A. Taylor spotted a nocturnal bird hiding inside a backyard tree on Mountain Top, New South Wales. Later, she may have been distracted by the sound of breaking glass from her china cabinet inside the house.

in the speckled trunk
a tawny frogmouth’s
camouflaged stare

* * *

tinkling glass
a python slithers between
antique crystal

Natalia Kuznetsova reflected on a mirror image in Moscow, Russia.

my cat always sees
a tiger in the mirror...
beastly vanity

Stoianka Boianova follows the path of haiku writers.

dark clouds
anxious ants rush
along the path

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

Timely and timeless haiku. The next issues of the Asahi Haikuist Network appear on Sept. 2, 16 and 30. Readers are invited to send haiku about ripening grain, rippling wheat or reaping rice, 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 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).