spring rain saving my car wash coins
--Bona M. Santos (Los Angeles, California)

* * *

blossoms spilling
from the birdbath
spring rain--
--Maire Morrissey Cummins (Glengarriff, Ireland)

* * *

summer birds
splashing the water
out of a birdbath
--Govind Joshi (Dehradun, India)

* * *

monsoon rains--
a kid watches a sparrow
on his swing
--Radhika De Silva (Colombo, Sri Lanka)

* * *

rain
on Basho’s pond
the frog already wet
--ai li (Singapore)

* * *

is it possible
to miss rain before the storm
that’s how I’ll miss you
--Shelli Jankowski-Smith (Swampscott, Massachusetts)

* * *

Ten minutes
spring drizzle in my brain
MRI scan
--Teiichi Suzuki (Osaka)

* * *

within this rosebud
the untold tale
of longing
--C.X. Turner (Birmingham, England)

* * *

patches of wild poppies
among the rye ears
landmines warning
--Levko Dovgan (Lviv, Ukraine)

* * *

rainy season
the curled pages
of a movie star biography
--Patrick Sweeney (Misawa, Aomori)

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

one more branch
it clutches another
and then Van Gogh
--Alan Summers (Chippenham, England)

The haikuist penned a hokku-like verse about Vincent van Gogh’s passion for painting plum and almond blossoms. The rainy season in Japan coincides with the ripening of plums. Keith Evetts feted the coronation in Thames Ditton, England, with small wild plums that were too bitter to eat freshly picked but make a remarkable British jam.

street party
sharing the last
of the damson jam

Tsanka Shishkova wrote this one-line in Sofia, Bulgaria, while looking forward to harvesting a well-pollinated line of plums: a scent of soil after April rain flying honey bees

Marek Printer might have bit his lip dreaming about fragrant plums in Kielce, Poland.

smell of wet earth
I imagine my orchard
full of fruit

Isabella Kramer skipped smooth flat rocks along a gliding trajectory as far as a mythical island blooming with fruit trees.

foggy lake
the stones skimming
to Avalon

Shishkova offered this windswept line: plum petals blown by the wind bridal veil

The haikuist ai li was sure the bride was wearing blue at a wedding in London, England.

summer wedding
she’s in something borrowed
something…

Nobody was wearing gray when the words “Yes, I do” were said aloud at a wedding attended by Elie Duvivier in Berlaimont, France. Masumi Orihara watched a black beauty air her wet feathers in Atsugi, Kanagawa Prefecture.

in the affirmative
for better or worse
the bride in black

* * *

Lady cormorant
her black dress keeps fluttering
upright in the river

Mario Massimo Zontini blew a kiss from Parma, Italy.

spring in the park
a kiss to a lady friend--
no matter the rain

June weddings are considered lucky. Angela Giordano watched as a bride threw her flowers: the mustard yellow of the faded mimosas in the bride’s bouquet

Rosemarie Schuldes celebrated a lucky catch in Mattsee, Austria.

bouquet of roses
banknotes within
happy birthday

David Greenwood had a busy week in St. Andrews, Scotland.

breeze in the trees
the sound soothes and reorders
my cluttered mind

Jerome Berglund offered this advice.

cease watering
and let nature take its course
healthcare directive

Giordano luxuriated in the humidity: early summer rain brings freshness to the skin

Shishkova retains her lost love in her dearest memories: a first love like cherry petals flirting with the gentle rain

jazz cafe
pink petals
in the rain

Singing the blues in Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland, Marion Clarke might have vicariously entered one of her grandmother’s dreams.

rusty nails
turn them blue
Gran’s hydrangeas

* * *

low saxophone note
blowing in the wind
blue hydrangeas

Mike Gallagher kept time with the rain in Ballyduff, Ireland.

Tapping
on the keyboard
patter of rain

Morrissey Cummins likely sang while rowing down the Glengarriff River to Bantry Bay in Ireland. John Pappas went clamming until it rained in Boston, Massachusetts.

river rowing--
oars disperse
the sunlight

* * *

summer shower
the clack of clams
in a net bag

Eavonka Ettinger loves when “light purple petals fill the skies and flutter everywhere covering cars, roads,” and even her senses. She related that nothing else feels quite as serene and perfect when violet-colored fern trees bloom in Long Beach, California.

jacaranda
petals gentle fall
the smell of purple

Kiyoshi Fukuzawa sang a blue note in Tokyo.

Baby birds gone flying...
hydrangea joins in my
sadness wet in blue

Zontini listened to dissonant harmonies in Parma, Italy: in the vernal night resound the blues of a cat in love

Satoru Kanematsu listened to musical improvisation round midnight. Helga Stania peeked through drawn curtains in Ettiswil, Switzerland.

Midnight meow
shaking the darkness
cats in love

* * *

gently bows
the curtain--
love night

Florin Golban bent an ear earthward and an eye skyward in Bucharest, Romania.

after the rain
listen to the steam
how it grows from the ground

* * *

after the storm
the night wipes off
the colors of the rainbow

At dusk on the last day of a long rainy weekend in Raleigh, North Carolina, Charles Smith went outside and counted a dozen fireflies.

Memorial Day
flashing tribute
first fireflies

Arvinder Kaur’s day brightened considerably in Chandigarh, India.

a burst of laburnum
on almost bare branches
morning after storm

Richard L. Matta took a moment to unravel in San Diego, California.

tangled fish lines
another soldier returns
from the front

Italy was racked by a deluge of rain after periods of drought. The precipitation relieved the drought, but it triggered flooding and mudslides. A road that lead to Giuliana Ravaglia’s house in the region of Emilia-Romagna, Italy, was devastated by flooding. She reported that in her neighborhood “there were landslides on almost every street.”

the river overflows...
in the tangle of branches
a little shoe

* * *

mud sea...
volunteers sing
“my Romagna”

Monica Kakkar felt the urge to move.

clouds play tag all day--
louder and green with envy
stuck-in-the-mud frogs

Anna Goluba observed poetry roll down the streets of Warsaw, Poland, noting it’s an “image which can be seen on many streets of the cities around the whole world.”

Heavy rain
Protesting farmers’ tractors
Roll in the city

Archie Carlos made hay before a great swath of rain rolled over St. Louis Park, Minnesota.

harvesting
green wild rice
flash floods

Berglund wrote this haiku in Minneapolis, while standing in a wide valley with spectacular bluffs watching the Minnesota River run into the Mississippi River.

Great River
the aloe sags
with root rot

Maya Daneva took a stand against imperialism and war in The Netherlands.

hailstorms…
keeping inside the federation
hundreds of people

Huge atmospheric river plumes regularly flow from Asia across the Pacific Ocean to North America. Kanematsu cursed under his breath, “hell” in Nagoya, while Carl Brennan shouted aloud, “hail” in North Syracuse, New York.

Drowsy spring
haiku misprinted
“hell” for “hill”

* * *

Evening news, an ode
to devils in high places...
the forecast says hail

The atmosphere was cold in Palmer, Alaska, when Bonnie J. Scherer wrote this haiku.

pelted by hail
the tulips turn
the other cheek

This month, river storms in the sky, which can carry as much water as the greatest rivers on land, have been forming in long and wide plumes of moisture causing floods and rock slides. Sweeney was rendered speechless on the Sea of Japan coast.

Earthquake
in the middle of a story
she’s heard before

Rivers in the sky transport water vapor from the hot tropics to drier regions in the United States. Here is a stanza from an ode to her old home by Jennifer Gurney in Broomfield, Colorado.

I miss hearing the
Spring rain on the metal roof
Of my sweet front porch

Mona Bedi practiced dance steps in Delhi, India. Ashoka Weerakkody sketched a village scene in Sri Lanka, noting how passersby wearing off-the-shoulder floral motif garments resemble lotus buds rising up from the mud to bloom looking pure and fresh. Rick Daddario knows the names of wind in Kailua, Hawaii.

rain puddle
I match my steps with
the dancing moon

* * *

muddy water--
lotus on her sari falls
dancing in wind

* * *

knowing wind
by another name
meditation

Pineapple Express windstorms carry warm water vapor plumes created over the Hawaiian tropics along various routes in the atmosphere towards the Pacific Northwest. Andrew Terrell composed this haiku during a trip to Hawaii. It was his last stop in the United States before leaving for his wife’s homeland of Australia.

small moon
covered by a patch of clouds
packing bags again

Eugeniusz Zacharski penned these four lines in Radom, Poland.

night crossing
of the swamp
our shadows fall
on each other

Sheila Weaver paused to watch the ocean while waiting for the ferry at Horseshoe Bay, British Columbia.

a seal swims slowly
out from under the bridge
the sea is his world

Natalia Kuznetsova crept in the darkness of Moscow, Russia.

the new moon--
a young girl at the sea edge
lost in reverie

A few days ago, in Arlington, Virginia, Mariya Gusev wrote this haiku and a letter to a colleague who could not remain silent about the disastrous effects of war, comparing her to birds “in the pre-dawn hour, who cannot stay silent, because they see the end of darkness. They know it will end. The light, and the normal order of life, will be restored, and those who have helped call forth that light, to keep it in others’ memory, will emerge with their conscience clear.”

they know it’s over--
birds singing in the pre-dawn
mark the edge of night

Zontini exhaled.

at long last the rain
but at the end of the day
we all miss the sun

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

Read haiku by firefly light in the rain at http://www.asahi.com/ajw/special/haiku/. The next issue of the Asahi Haikuist Network appears on June 30. Readers are invited to compose haiku related to Masaoka Shiki’s (1867-1902) haiku: spring breeze this grassy field makes me want to play catch (haru kaze ya mari wonagetaki kusa no hara). Send inspired haiku 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).