while kids need shipments of sunflower oil to survive
--Helen Buckingham (Wells, Somerset, U.K.)

* * *

Camels marching...
alongside the pipeline
no one knows where to!
--Kiyoshi Fukuzawa (Tokyo)

* * *

pumpjacks seesawing
natives walk on the pipelines
long childhood memory
--A.J. Anwar (Jakarta, Indonesia)

* * *

fish and fries--
an oil stain
covers the news of the day
--Capota Daniela Lacramioara (Galati, Romania)

* * *

spillage...
the seagulls
in an oil bath
--R. Suresh Babu (Chikkamagaluru, India)

* * *

by the car
the colours of an oil puddle
morning chill
--Padraig O’Morain (Dublin, Ireland)

* * *

methane rains
in slow motion
the color of the gulf
--Minko Tanev (Sofia, Bulgaria)

* * *

North Sea
in the low tide rest the boats
powerless
--Mario Massimo Zontini (Parma, Italy)

* * *

railhead silos
trucks in long lines
wait to unload
--Marilyn Humbert (Sydney, Australia)

* * *

the field of cut wheat
has changed from golden to brown--
winged grasshoppers
--J.D. Nelson (Lafayette, Colorado)

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

fuel crisis
oil
on ice
--Helen Buckingham (Wells, Somerset, U.K.)

The haikuist described the world’s biggest current problem in five words. Pippa Phillips deduced this line in St. Louis, Missouri: accent reduction-- the sound of oil gives her away.

Satoru Kanematsu lit a candle in Nagoya and offered a prayer for the world.

Flickering
through the priest’s thin robe
candlelight

Madeleine Basa Vinluan described the pain of skyrocketing prices in Manila.

Crude oil mixes with
flood waters, gasoline with anguished human tears.

Arvinder Kaur observed that oil and water don’t mix in Chandigarh, India. Stephen J. DeGuire’s pets don’t seem to get along in Los Angeles.

sailing on
a hundred rainbows
oil spill

* * *

cat and dog
named oil and water--
perfect mix

Angela Giordano never tired of this story that took place in Avigliano, Italy.

oil and petrol:
grandfather tells us his past
war in Europe

Enjoying the autumn afternoon air in Joetsu, Niigata Prefecture, Yutaka Kitajima reread George Orwell’s 1933 memoir and study of poverty, “Down and Out in Paris and London.”

Indian summer
Orwell’s books at ease
in the sun

Sarah Davies lamented the sight of someone asleep at the wheel in Bedford, U.K. Robin Rich feared someone who played with fire in Brighton, U.K.

Dear iridescence
of the spill of petrol,
gutter rainbow

* * *

spilt petrol
at the service station
alcohol breath

Eavonka Ettinger recently discovered that where she lives in Long Beach, California, offshore “lie little islands cleverly made to look beautiful that camouflage the oil derricks within.”

derricks long
hidden behind lushness
exposed by drought

Roberta Beach Jacobson penned a line that her neighbors in Indianola, Iowa, might think is greenwashing: the cost of gas another reason not to mow.

While on the phone in Seattle, Washington, petro c.k.’s battery died.

groaning on his phone
gas prices and heatwaves
connection lost

Eva Limbach knows what’s on everyone’s mind in Saarbrucken, Germany. High prices are hurting Marie Derley in Ath, Belgium. Mauro Battini sat down to talk with a fortune teller in Santa Croce, Italy.

checking the prices
at the filling station
ongoing war

* * *

petrol station
the gasoline gun
aims at the heart

* * *

gasoline skyrocketing--
i question a seer
before the trip

Masumi Orihara loves eco-friendly hiking and biking in Atsugi, Kanagawa Prefecture.

Hike ’n’ bike
lovers unconcerned
gasoline

Mircea Moldovan wrote a line describing how the fuel crisis has made us forget about the beautiful islands in the Black Sea: a wave of oil … wiped the island’s memory.

Kimberly Kuchar tried to save seagulls in Austin, Texas.

cleaning blackened birds
using dish soap
petroleum-based

Mike Fainzilber spotted a sea monster in Rehovot, Israel.

when waves have eyes
the turtle
and the sea

Ashoka Weerakkody used a blue sky approach to plot a trajectory from Colombo, Sri Lanka, to Oceania: “Once in orbit no energy is needed to stay up in space … so the higher we go over the oceans, the less we have to depend on oil.”

four, two, one
and zero, we have lift off
no oil zone

* * *

Oceania
over the blue only waters
blue only skies

Nitu Yumnam is trying to cut down on the high cost of commuting in India where low-cost electric mopeds and three-wheeled taxis are helping to clear smog. Rickshaw drivers in New Delhi can trade depleted batteries for fully charged ones at swapping stations.

shuttle rickshaw
scent of my favorite hair oil
in the driver’s hair

Hla Yin Mon rode a two-wheeler in Yangon.

gasoline price hikes
her bike ride to work
catching eyes

Keith Evetts didn’t seem to mind when insect repellent ran out of stock in Thames Ditton, U.K.

jump, flea!
why not the cat
without neem oil

Giordano’s grandmother warned her not to play with beetles because they carry the holy water that oozes from the burial place of a saint’s bones in Bari, Italy.

a ladybug:
the oil of San Nicola
trickles over the fingers

Mona Bedi wore gold rings in Delhi, India.

rippling wheat
a touch of gold
on my fingers

Sherry Reniker is mindful not to harm other sentient beings in Kent, Washington.

a fly, drunk
on lavender oil
easy catch & release

Looking back on his life in San Nicholas de Ibarra, Mexico, Mel Goldberg commented on reincarnation believing that based on “the accumulated negative karma, rebirth occurs into a lower bodily form.”

dung beetle
mistakes
of previous life

Viewed from her vantage in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, J.L. Huffman suggested the current gas war is following chess-like strategies.

Russian gambit
Gazprom pipes shut down
Europe frozen

Francoise Maurice walked past abandoned cars in Draguignan, France. Evetts may have rolled to a stop at nirvana, a place of perfect peace and happiness.

oil shortage
a few wilted leaves
on the windshields

* * *

out of gas
the sweetness of rain
on a mountain road

Stranded by the side of the road, Evetts nonetheless believes in miracles: drinking water in the miracle of sunset.

Giordano frolicked with her husband in ocean waves. Maurice placed a Tahitian gardenia behind her left ear.

honeymoon--
a dip in the blues
of Polynesia

* * *

tiare flower
the song of the ocean
in the shell

Teiichi Suzuki sang a song of lament. Companies in his hometown in Fukui Prefecture manufacture offshore crude oil rigs for the only oil and gas fields in Japan that lie off the coast of Niigata Prefecture.

Elegy
for the ocean waste--
a whale song

Bona M. Santos penned this historic line in Los Angeles, California: the memory of migrating whales from sea to sea to sea.

Curt Linderman rejoiced in harmony in Seattle, Washington.

three humpback whales
join the lone boat engine
deep water doo-wop

Michael Buckingham Gray sang for a beached whale in Western Australia.

songless
a whale
in the shallows

R.C. Thomas likely penned this haiku at the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth, U.K. The unique shark he wrote about achieves superior binocular vision and depth perception when it slowly moves its strangely shaped cephalofoil from side to side.

spawning coral
all around
a hammerhead’s pan

* * *

The 12th Setouchi-Matsuyama International Photo-Haiku Contest supported by The Asahi Shimbun offers readers the chance to win prizes for taking photos and writing haiku about the sea. Enter as many photo haiku as you like: (https://matsuyamahaiku.jp/contest/free_eng/).

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

The next issues of the Asahi Haikuist Network appear on Dec. 16 and 30. Readers are invited to send haiku related to light or darkness 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).

(Illustration by Mitsuaki Kojima)