golden sunrise over a golden yellow canola field... long footpath
--Tsanka Shishkova (Sofia, Bulgaria)

* * *

goldfinch’s first trill
I tune my violin
one more time
--Marek Printer (Kielce, Poland)

* * *

spring scene
the honey buzzards
glide north
--Christina Chin (Kuching, Borneo)

* * *

older love
the attention of others
prising us apart
--Mike Gallagher (Ballyduff, Ireland)

* * *

archeological site
engrossed in twirling
sunglasses
--Aparna Pathak (Gurugram, India)

* * *

impact
of a golf ball
in the regolith
--petro c.k. (Seattle, Washington)

* * *

building in progress
the cut walnut trees
were bearing fruit
--Marie Derley (Ath, Belgium)

* * *

concrete and metal
cover human’s expansion
trees hide more and more
--John S. Gilbertson (Greenville, South Carolina)

* * *

that odd man on the tram line
with brush and dustpan
making the tracks gleam
--Padraig O’Morain (Dublin, Ireland)

* * *

Dark mountainy dreams
The cry of soldiers dying
Swords flash behind my eyes
--O.R. Melling (Dublin, Ireland)

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

citizenship
still not processed
golden spike dreams
--Ashoka Weerakkody (Colombo, Sri Lanka)

The haikuist reminds us that today is Constitution Day, one of the national holidays in Japan’s Golden Week. Morgan Liphart’s haiku was “inspired by the riotous spring in Golden, Colorado.”

In a field of quiet
blooms, be a cricket’s song, a shock
of thunder, spring screaming

Hosted by Culture Ireland and the Embassy of Ireland in Japan, the author O.R. Melling is touring Japan from today until the end of the month. She penned this startling haiku while walking “down a narrow trail flanked by woods on either side. A sudden sound bursts from the trees on my left, a loud disruption of branches and leaves.”

A doe crosses me
Both of us wildly startled
My heart chases her

Dennis Woolbright awoke with a fright when an earthquake shook the island of Shikoku and the haiku city of Matsuyama. He penned this line when he arose from bed: Midnight jolt-- gives way to-- misty morning

Yasuji Ohashi observed a young girl cycling past the Golden Pavilion temple in Kyoto.

Golden hair on a bicycle
waves on the way to Zen temples
rich in green leaves

Mario Massimo Zontini bought a basket of golden fruit in Parma, Italy.

the greengrocer
asks “the ones with seeds?”
buying mandarins

Leisurely shopping in Rzeszow, Poland, Amin Jack Pedziwiater was reminded to pick up a box of sweets for Mother’s Day.

woman with child
in the confectionery
enamored eyes

Carole Daoust has likely read the Brothers Grimm fairy tale of “The Golden Goose” to her children. An executive officer for Haiku Canada, she is author of “One Less Raindrop on the Peony.”

Watching
The solar eclipse with my kids
And a goose

Sanae Kagaya lined up a row of treats in Tokyo: putting marshmallow on mother’s desk, remaining snow

While baking in Delhi, India, Mona Bedi blended the phrasal verb “fold in” into her delicious haiku.

folding love
into chocolate cookies
Mother’s Day

Anne-Marie McHarg’s day started with a fine view after “leaving the underground station and crossing a main road” in London, England.

Spring unfolding
Rose-coloured skirt at dawn
Awakened

Radhika De Silva shared strawberries and doughnuts in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Plucking the last petal from a daisy, Gilbertson sang out the verse “she loves me” in Greenville, South Carolina. When faced with the facts, Salil Chaturvedi gave up guessing in Goa, India.

hugging my gift
six-year-old grandson asks
“will you marry me?”

* * *

Would you love me?
bring me a flower
as the sun grows tired

* * *

she loves me
she loves me not, either way
this flower is gone

Biswajit Mishra misses his mom in Calgary, Alberta.

spring afternoon
long flight to see mom
after she’s gone

Bedi penned this line while thinking of her father who passed away: if only death was a choice--mayflies

Angela Giordano never forgets the second Sunday in May holiday in Avigliano, Italy.

I still remember
my mother’s love
unconditional

Alan York visited a nondescript pond at the weekend. Keith Evetts eavesdropped at a crocodile farm near Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. In Letca, Romania, Mircea Moldovan realizes that aging skin creates unsympathetic tears around the eyelids.

Turtles bask
in the sun, as if they knew
it was Sunday

* * *

crocodiles mating
the unanswered questions
of a lady tourist

* * *

a stork returns
crocodile tears
in the elder eyes

Urszula Marciniak observed a frenzied picnic in Lodz, Poland.

lunch for the black storks
one of the fishes tried to leave
the feast in the nest

Melling won’t likely find many petunias in blossom, but the Japanese countryside is full of stone walls, castles and temples to explore during her early summer tour of Japan.

Grey stone cloister walls
Cool breezes circle the air
Petunias tremble

Ohashi dined on oysters and white wine in Paris. James Penha no longer has a job, but he still has a voracious appetite for seafood in Bali, Indonesia. Nalini de Silva clammed in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Winter drizzle
lights from the oyster bar--
Quartier Latin

* * *

time to shuck
unopened oysters--
retirement

* * *

a walking oyster
in among the seashells
hides from a wave

Roberta Beach Jacobson was thinking of going fishing in Indianola, Iowa: stuffed to the gills… with plastics

Vasu Sankamnerd invoked Mother Earth in Bangkok, Thailand.

Anthropocene,
Arise again Mother,
And Revive together

On the romantic island of Malta, Francis Attard suddenly gave a homeless woman a box of cocoa kisses containing messages of love hidden in silver foil wrappers. Richa Sharma gazed at flowering love in Ghaziabad, India. Anne-Marie McHarg watched from behind lovers in London, U.K.

ponder bag lady
reduced carry two for one
baci chocolates

* * *

elderly couple
with a bag and a bouquet
cats in love

* * *

Tails entwined
Under starry skies
Cats in love

Satoru Kanematsu noted his peonies are already swelling in his garden in Nagoya. Masumi Orihara nodded to the gardeners digging up earthworms in her neighborhood.

Peonies:
passion gushing forth
from the earth

* * *

Green thumb
long-awaited spring
bursts forth

Gallagher deftly varied grammatical tenses on these three lines.

that summer
the longings we felt
each other feel

Jean-Hughes Chevy repeated assonance and consonance sounds on four poetic lines that stretched out a metaphor about making a choice in Paris, France.

returning
from the snow without snow
the dazzling modesty
of daffodils

Luciana Moretto believes that poetry influenced by Eros, the Greek god of love, will inevitably be touched by Thanatos, the god of death.

both captivated
by a lacewing
a poem unspoken

John Hamley has a question for the gods watching from the west of his home in Marmora, Ontario. Lori Kiefer kept a watchful eye at sundown in London, England.

I’ve seen the dragon cloud
its eyes the setting sun
do gods know fear?

* * *

spring sunset
in the eyes of an owl
the whole sky

On a tedious journey to Fiji Island, David Cox waited to see if his travel companions would pick up on this pun that employs an oronym.

baited breath--
the dragon drag on
of a too old year

Jacobson playfully penned this onomatopoeic line with a homophone word: an owl calls I don’t know who

Kiefer spotted a tawny owl.

nesting…
a tree-shaped owl
in an owl-shaped tree

In Sydney, Australia, when Marilyn Humbert heard a haunting birdcall “cur-lee,” she knew it to be unmistakably from a golden-brown plumed bird with an impossibly long, thin and curved bill.

spring dawn
washes across the plains
a curlew’s cry

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

Strike gold at http://www.asahi.com/ajw/special/haiku/. The next issue of the Asahi Haikuist Network appears on May 17. Readers are welcome to write about something blue, 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).