in the gaze of daisies children’s tears dry
--Helga Stania (Ettiswil, Switzerland)

* * *

clear lake
water serpent
looks at the frog for a long time
--Dejan Ivanovic (Lazarevac, Serbia)

* * *

New mother breastfeeding
her back
to Mount Fuji
--Patrick Sweeney (Misawa, Aomori)

* * *

childhood love
holding still to his crumb of bread
a dozing child
--Justice Joseph Prah (Accra, Ghana)

* * *

advent candles
kids ready to light
the waning moon
--Archie Carlos (St. Louis Park, Minnesota)

* * *

A little child
kisses the flower
on the twig...
--Kumari Handapangoda (Colombo, Sri Lanka)

* * *

spring morning--
every leaf cradles
its own raindrop
--Tanja Trcek (Golnik, Slovenia)

* * *

Disney doll shop...
a little girl speaks
to Cinderella
--Tsanka Shishkova (Sofia, Bulgaria)

* * *

feeling like
a kid again
scraped knee
--Richard Bailly (Fargo, North Dakota)

* * *

childhood monopoly
always the banker
who gave it all away
--Kath Abela Wilson (Pasadena, California)

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

merchant child
a snickers bar each day
bought with my pennies
--Jackie Chou (Pico Rivera, California)

The haikuist knows where her money goes. Satoru Kanematsu reunited with his family in Nagoya today, Children’s Day.

Swallow’s flight--
for faraway high school
granddaughter

Junko Saeki in Japan, Monica Kakkar in India, and Eugeniusz Zacharski in Poland, respectively, played outside all day long.

reflecting the moon
come evening boys’ voices
bouncing on the water

* * *

dayspring to nightfall
laughter swells amidst flowers
new swings in the park

* * *

falling then rising
through the branches
garden swing

Marshall Hryciuk couldn’t find a spot to set up his tent north of Toronto, Ontario.

campground full
sunset shimmers
through reeds of a marsh

Kimberly A. Horning drove her car to a secluded cul-de-sac near the beach in St. Augustine, Florida.

DEAD END sign
dried crab cakes wallow
in mustard

Zeljko Funda dreamed while on vacation in Varazdin, Croatia. Jennifer Gurney swayed in Broomfield, Colorado.

sandy beach
a boy brings the Pacific
in a toy bucket

* * *

Hypnotic waves
Roll out and back, out and back
The magician’s watch

Ramona Linke and her family love the friendly neighborhood of Beesenstedt, Germany. Lilia Racheva felt at home again in Rousse, Bulgaria.

bright spring day
the ice-cream man offers me
coconut & mango

* * *

New Year
children’s laughter
in the old house

Govind Joshi stopped at a red traffic light in Dehradun, India.

a man
with his family
starts the roadshow

Gurney understands kids.

The bleat of a lamb
Searching for its mother now
That she has arrived

Tonight, Simone Pansolin can watch a shadow’s path during a lunar eclipse over Genoa, Italy: naked in backlight the curvature of the earth

Kanematsu watched a lucky man being chased in a naked festival (“hadaka matsuri”) held at Konomiya shrine in Inazawa, Aichi Prefecture.

Shinto fete:
jostling naked men
welcome spring

Aljosa Vukovic wore appropriate attire for an occasion in Croatia, Sibenik. Nani Mariani applied makeup in Melbourne, Australia.

Grandma’s
punk hairstyle--
cherry blossoms

* * *

face painting
a thousand faces
in the fog

Tomorrow, the Archbishop of Canterbury will crown Charles III and his wife, Camilla, as king and queen of the United Kingdom. Anne-Marie McHarg prepared champagne for coronation day in London, England. Writing from Edinburgh, Scotland, James Roderick Burns spotted an early sign.

Across the land
A nation awaits to toast
The sun’s rays Our King

* * *

From the nave
of the cathedral
a moth, a sunbeam

Xenia Tran offered this subconscious thought about the coronation from Nairn, Scotland.

queen bee--
in spring’s waters
a new humming

Alan Summers recalled cherry blossom trees lining his late mother’s street in Chippenham, England.

the pink rains
how they trickle and run
over and across us

Farah Ali knows what children are hoping to see in Brighton, England.

a hundred little smiles
children wander into
the doll department

Noel King was aghast to spot where the children spilled Ballymaloe relish in Tralee, Ireland.

red red red-- wounded
toy soldier’s blood
on Mum’s carpet

Yutaka Kitajima voiced the thoughts of a disappointed grandmother in Joetsu, Niigata Prefecture. Wai Mei Wong, a former early childhood educator, was disappointed to see garbage strewn where she walks in Toronto, Ontario.

Hina dolls
somehow out of place
unnoticed

* * *

spring forage…
along riverbanks
dotted with trash

Kanematsu observed a group of children walk up to look at an intriguing “jizo” Buddhist statue of a guardian deity for children and travelers.

School outing
stone god and goddess
welcome kids

Eugeniusz Zacharski gently swayed back and forth between the trees in Radom, Poland. After a visit from her granddaughter, Joanne van Helvoort looked forlornly at a playground in the small seaside town of Beerta in The Netherlands.

falling then rising
through the branches
garden swing

* * *

spring breeze
as if she still plays
with her tire swing

Mariya Gusev overheard an unrequited greeting in Arlington, Virginia.

already the wren
in the bare branches, singing
to someone not here

Tomislav Maretic worried about an old home in Zagreb, Croatia.

where has the snail gone,
leaving his empty house?
a mountain in the rain

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

The next issue of the Asahi Haikuist Network appears on May 19. You are invited to send a haiku on a topic that you think G-7 leaders should resolve, by 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).