The shimmering heat… dear soil in a wicker basket on someone’s back
--Yosa Buson (Kyoto)

* * *

the way she cares
for every plant
water me!
--Randy Brooks (Taylorville, Illinois)

* * *

the life
in a handful of soil…
Earth Day
--Helga Stania (Ettiswil, Switzerland)

* * *

turning over
the inherited soil
start-up farmer
--Masumi Orihara (Atsugi, Kanagawa)

* * *

Joyful lunch--
hand-pulled small turnips
from son’s farm
--Satoru Kanematsu (Nagoya)

* * *

first sweat on the back
since last fall on the farm
comfy weariness
--Yuji Hayashi (Fukuoka)

* * *

divorce papers
I cut tulips from
a flowerbed
--Marek Printer (Kielce, Poland)

* * *

return from the field
a sleeping baby on the back
of the mother
--Slobodan Pupovac (Zagreb, Croatia)

* * *

summer sky
a tonga bringing
school children home
--Govind Joshi (Dehradun, India)

* * *

Backlit--
mother’s white hair
an evening breeze
--Julia Guzman (Cordoba Argentina)

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

shimmering heat…
students seem to be walking
on a lake--
--Daniela Misso (San Gemini, Italy)

On a hot day in June, the haikuist observed students going to university. The road appeared to shimmer, creating an illusory lake. Yutaka Kitajima penned this surreal line in Joetsu, Niigata Prefecture: having once walked on air--close together

In today’s column, haikuists share stories about magical places in this world that seem to access a parallel universe. A bell tinkled when Kanematsu opened a door.

Swallow chicks
welcoming customers--
barbershop

Knowing everyone’s name in an old neighborhood, Patrick Sweeney took a seat at a Melbourne-style cafe. After downing a shot of espresso, he went next door and sat in a barber’s chair.

Coffee with Frankie
the six ways
of the master

* * *

Shaky
the barber
gets all the new customers

Francoise Maurice wrote this line when she discovered a nest in Draguignan, France: old chapel--young swifts in the crack of the wall

A shimmering blue streak reminded Ian Willey of the evanescence of raising children in Takamatsu, Kagawa Prefecture. Teiichi Suzuki observed veils of deepening blue.

Children’s Day
the blue in
a bird’s wings

* * *

The gathering dusk
silent blue heron stained
deeply with dark blue

Pupovac followed a sentient being whose sense of touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight led him to a place where the veil between this world and an eternal world is thin. A thin place is a physical location where someone experiences a moment of overwhelming peace and tranquility.

high noon
the butterfly is looking for
shade

Sweeney pondered beliefs in Misawa, Aomori Prefecture. Keith Evetts remarked on the new British king’s mysterious anointing ceremony that required him to disrobe inside Westminster Abbey.

not the kind of man
who would ever dream
he was a butterfly

* * *

field lilies
rumours the king had no clothes
prove to be fake news

Writing from Cleveland, Ohio, Joshua Gage watched a rooftop sunrise.

crimson dawn--
icicle dripping
from a gargoyle’s talon

Contemplating whether the recent Group of Seven leaders’ meeting in Hiroshima was a magical place, Levko Dovgan from Lviv, Ukraine, suggested this image of a process that likely took place during lunch. Reading the news about the G-7 while smoke from wildfires raged over her home in Calgary, Alberta, Liz Gibbs wondered whether the leaders’ inflamed passions of the war had overridden sound reasoning on climate issues. When the prime minister of Italy left the G-7 early, Giuliana Ravaglia wrote to say that she “can’t write on the theme of spring--it’s disappeared.” Her home in Bologna, Italy, “was devastated by an unprecedented flood.”

hard jigsaw puzzles
sketch of the future world
on seven napkins

* * *

scorched earth
sitting in the hot seat
seven nations inflamed

* * *

flood...
I cannot find anymore
the way home

Following 17-syllable haiku patterns can lead poets to experience vital Zen modes of thought, according to Kyle Sullivan, a graduate student of poetry in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Note his terseness of expression in this haiku.

outer ring of a puddle…
all the termite’s wings
suddenly flutter

Kanchan Chatterjee described a passing moment in Jamshedpur, India.

muggy morning…
a yellow-robed monk goes past
with his begging bowl

Thin places aren’t always perceived with the five physical senses. At home in Bradford on Avon, England, Patricia Hawkhead explored in confidence.

unlocking secrets
the buried treasures
of the mind

Buddha is believed to have attained enlightenment in the shade of a Bodhi tree in Bihar, India. In Sri Lanka, Ashoka Weerakkody meditated his worries away at Kalutara Temple by sprinkling water from an earthen pot onto the roots of a sacred fig tree. Chatterjee suggested a mirage.

water spills
over devotees’ earthen pots
quenching sacred roots

* * *

summer river…
a long line of villagers
with clay vessels

Zen Buddhism involves the finding of quiet stillness and introspection through brilliant flashes of insight. Kanematsu marveled at the sudden flash of a pet fish as it approached a thin glass pane separating their worlds of water and land. Murasaki Sagano discovered an enchanted location in Tokyo under a tree covered in blossoms with four petals in the form of a cross.

A glass bowl--
goldfish magnified
abruptly

* * *

Flowering dogwoods
faces brighten up
in a moment

A creative writing student at Hokusei Gakkuen University, Arisa Matsuho juxtaposed colors.

yellow sun blue sea
mixture of colors
sprouting green...

Sagano stood in front of a pastel canvas hanging at Bunkamura Museum of Art. Changing her vantage point, the haikuist discovered a thin place where one can walk in two worlds--two connected worlds.

Shimmers
the colors of flowers
Marie Laurencin

* * *

Seen from this angle
the spring sea becomes calmer
everlasting shape

Kitajima prayed for protection while sitting under purple blossoms, the emblem of the Japanese prime minister emblazoned on the 500-yen coin.

Amulet
for my first voyage...
paulownia

Xenia Tran juxtaposed two moments in Nairn, Scotland. In haiku, the silences between and at the end of lines can be as expressive as the words.

wildflowers--
capturing the before
and after

In Warsaw, Poland, Beata Czeszejko experimented unsuccessfully with an artificial intelligence chatbot, which was given a prompt and instructed to write a haiku.

AI--wrote a haiku
that’s me--writes two, but using
the old typewriter

Typing this haiku in Radom, Poland, Eugeniusz Zacharski pondered existence in a twin world.

frogspawn
my twin brother somewhere
in a distant world

Tao Imazato mentioned a special place name in Hokkaido to link his poem across time and space.　 Sweeney penned his poem simultaneously, but on the other side of the Tsugaru Strait on the very tip of Honshu.

rod ready
they’re coming back soon
Cape Chikyuu

* * *

Cape Shiriya
the wild mare
clears her nostrils

A dying glacier reached out to Minko Tanev in Sofia, Bulgaria.

evening breeze
thundering icebergs
in sprays of dusk

Suzuki bought a blue-stained print. Draguignan loves light blue.

Rainy season--
putting on the wall
Chagall’s lithograph

* * *

my gaze
lost in the blue of your eyes
flax in bloom

Robin Rich twisted twine around his flower bed, but might have been dreaming about sailing on the high sea.

first full day
working in the garden
sun browned kneck

Kiyoshi Fukuzawa observed garden flowers creep along two dimensions. Kanematsu watched a garden-variety snail glide on its mucus in the netherworld.

Peonies spread
vertical then horizontal
deep through the park

* * *

A long way
to a no-nuke world
creeping snail

Learning that her intended flight was already full, Nani Mariani decided to patiently wait on standby at Tullamarine Airport in Melbourne, Australia.

hot sun
waiting for the afternoon
plane to hometown

Guzman penned this observation after returning home from an international haiku meeting in Morocco.

an evening breeze--
in the silent streets
only the autumn leaves

Czeszejko didn’t dare disturb a fellow traveler. While waiting for his cross-island bus to reach the Kona International Airport in Hawaii, Andrew Terrell endured heavy pressure bearing down on his kidneys.

my spring cleaning
in the passenger seat
sitting spider

* * *

bus bladder
watching the pigeon carry
what’s too big

Sweeney became painfully aware of how important a window to the world can be.

her nature hike
to the window
rheumatoid arthritis

Horst Ludwig was born on Mother’s Day 87 years ago. For his birthday this year, his children took him on a drive for a special view of the countryside in Washington state.

Far in the valley
a well-travelled road gets lost
in the sinking sun

Marie Derley was steadied by a good samaritan in Ath, Belgium.

the shimmering heat
passing over the rocks
our shadows wobble

Joshi watched an intuitive mind return to a safe place.

summer heat
a child positions two armchairs
into a makeshift crib

Suzuki watched someone turn to stone at Ryoanji temple in Kyoto.

In meditation
lone traveler becomes part
of the stone garden

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Discover thin places at http://www.asahi.com/ajw/special/haiku/. The next issues of the Asahi Haikuist Network appear on June 16 and 30. You are invited to write a haiku inspired by Matsuo Basho’s starting verse (hokku): hydrangea… in the season of unlined clothes light blue (ajisai ya katabira doki no usu asagi). Send haiku 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).