roughing up the bridesmaids some june bugs
--Eva Limbach (Saarbrucken, Germany)

* * *

hocking
her great aunt’s sapphire ring
payday blues
--Bonnie J. Scherer (Palmer, Alaska)

* * *

Breathing
the same piece of blue
moon and sun
--Elisabeth Guichard (Lyon, France)

* * *

this blue butterfly,
flits through my garden, carefree--
a rare reminder…
--Alan Maley (Canterbury, England)

* * *

love story
as sweet as the scallops
your kiss
--Francoise Maurice (Draguignan, France)

* * *

savoring
the backfin meat
in the steamed crab claw
--Kathy Watts (Half Moon Bay, California)

* * *

my darling
in pilou pyjamas
soft mochi
--Marie Derley (Ath, Belgium)

* * *

ocean pearl
an angle of holding
a full moon
--Dorna Hainds (Lapeer, Michigan)

* * *

NOLA oysters
he lingers a bit
on her pearls
--Archie G. Carlos (St. Louis Park, Minnesota)

* * *

collecting Venus clams
side by side...
let’s cook some spaghetti
--Luciana Moretto (Treviso, Italy)

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

first summer rain--
on our fingers
rings of gold
--Mikael Kales (Odense, Denmark)

Congratulations go first to the haikuist, who composed the above poem and proudly announced: “My wife and I just got married… on Saturday, June 8.”

Today marks the summer solstice, when the sun shines at its highest point in the sky. Stephen J. DeGuire attended a hastily arranged marriage in Los Angeles, California.

summer’s first day
justice of the peace performs
a shotgun wedding

Ivan Georgiev reported that the sunny skies suddenly clouded over in Gottingen, Germany.

June thunder
in the bride’s womb
a playful echo

Jerome Berglund waxed poetic in “Miami for a dear cousin’s wedding.”

weaving in
and out of clouds
a mirror scrapes the sky

Tony Williams attended a lively occasion in Glasgow, Scotland. Masumi Orihara said she composed a haiku on a fine day in June as she “walked down stone stairs surrounded by… the whiteness of flowers that evoked an image of a bride.”

Scottish wedding…
bagpipes
fighting the wind

* * *

to the altar
the whitest of white
hydrangea path

On this auspicious, longest day of the year, J.D. Nelson visited Greenlee Wildlife Preserve.

a blue dragonfly
sparkles in the green cattails--
first day of summer

Govind Joshi admired a string of pearls in Dehradun, India. Tsanka Shishkova admired the heaven above Sofia, Bulgaria.

village wedding
in limelight
women’s neckwear

* * *

June moon
the bride’s veil
the Milky Way

Anna Goluba said the local priest was taken aback in Warsaw, Poland, when he announced: “Should anyone present know of any reason that this couple should not be joined in holy matrimony, speak now or forever.”

A white butterfly
on her ring finger
June wedding

Nuri Rosegg arose in the early morning in Oslo, Norway.

country wedding
meadow in morning glow
butterfly ballet

Maurice listened as black crows descended on an estate garden in Draguignan, France.

blackthorns in flower
the croak of his voice
that says yes

Moretto tried on “a very soft like cashmere, my latest purchase...”

summer vagary
a bamboo fiber singlet
regardless of cost

Deborah Karl-Brandt saw her name printed in the window of an envelope delivered to Bonn, Germany.

breathing meditation
her finger rips open
the envelope

Benedicte Kusendila doubts he will be sleeping in Belsele, Belgium, on the auspicious night of the full moon in July.

hoppers,
sleep on restless legs
at Buck Moon

During a restless short night, Nikola Duretic composed this poem at four in the morning in Zagreb, Croatia. Satoru Kanematsu was up at five in the morning in Nagoya.

Tiny cracks
in our lives--
china moon

* * *

Early dawn--
the first train rattles
my small house

Kusendila penned an adage. The sidewalk must have been hot enough to fry an egg according to what Berglund saw going on.

these spring chicks grow fast
my mother’s gone to feed them;
footsteps fade away

* * *

banqueta
hen and rooster
tightly knit

Monica Kakkar composed a haiku for India’s greatest river that rises in the Himalayas.

louder than tourists…
on a mountain with green leaves
roar of the Ganges

Xenia Tran made a toast for an anniversary in Nairn, Scotland.

Gretna Green...
thirty-three years of roses
since we said “I do”

Maley watched as a roar of blue flooded the forest floor.

a tide of bluebells
gives woods their annual blue-rinse--
floods them with fragrance…

Hifsa Ashraf confronted her sadness with this line in Rawalpindi, Pakistan: midsummer sky the face of my blues

Lilia Racheva was teased by flickering summer lights in Rousse, Bulgaria.

June wedding,
fireflies dancing
in the flowers

Junko Saeki sometimes relies on her ability to compose haiku--to understand something--without using the ordinary five senses of sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste. Fearing that haiku will soon be classified as an intangible heritage under a Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties in Japan, the Tokyo-based haikuist suggested that we “don’t need such officious interferences” and that we’re better off writing when “perfectly happy, free and spontaneous.”

flickering fireflies
why didn’t I write sooner?
the sixth sense

Another wave of early summer colds and viruses is making the rounds, reports Yutaka Kitajima in Joetsu, Niigata Prefecture.

Pandemic...
helpless to escort you
June bride

Mauro Battini listened while a groom planted a green shoot from a wedding bouquet in Pisa, Italy.

placing the flowers
of his marriage--
noise of a worm

Stuck in Indianola, Iowa, Roberta Beach Jacobson put on an aloha shirt. She also suffers from an earworm--a melancholic island song with an easy to remember melody that keeps playing back in her mind.

dressed for the Big Island
for now I only wave
from afar

* * *

aloha memories
strums of a ukulele
at dusk

Minko Tanev helped a best man pin a boutonniere in the buttonhole of his tuxedo in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Bright week
pink flower shines
on the wedding lapel

Florian Munteanu suggested that haiku are best composed with the swish of an inkbrush in Bucharest, Romania.

haiku
hand made
in digital world

Appreciating everything, Tuyet Van Do’s eyes might be bigger than her stomach in Melbourne, Australia.

post eye surgery
homemade cheesecake
tastes creamier

Stoianka Boianova watched the parents dance with the bride and groom in Sofia, Bulgaria.

legs dance
eyes sparkle--
wedding wine

Wiesław Karlinski suggested a variation of a metaphor for retying the knot in Namyslow, Poland.

June morning
changes tie again
groom’s father

Giuliana Ravaglia dried her tears in Bologna, Italy.

Year of the Dragon--
the eyes see again
the moon in the well

Returning to a once-familiar garden, Sherry Reniker was greeted by the heady scent of gold-banded mountain lilies. Native to Japan, the bulbs were traditionally foraged for eating in Chinese cuisine.

strolling
near our old place
yama yuri

Teiichi Suzuki composed a haiku about “a gorgeous flower… multihued in color with aromatic scent” with a lasting impression until death do us part.

Peony falls
leaving behind
night silence

In 1955, Japan was just beginning to recover from the Pacific War when Yukio Mishima penned “Peonies,” a short story about an army colonel who had killed 580 women in the Rape of Nanking with his own hands. It was written with a tone of detachment that began: “An unexpected friend came to invite me to an unexpected place… a peony garden.” In the next haiku, British author Alan Maley takes us to see a row of magnificently blooming peonies that resemble dignified widows with titles and properties derived from their late husbands.

crimson peonies
overweight and over-dressed,
blowsy dowagers

Uchechukwu Onyedikam enjoyed an after-marriage feast held in the groom’s household in Lagos, Nigeria.

Walimatul Nikkah
the bride’s extremities revealing
henna

Roberta Beach Jacobson scheduled her month in Indianola, Iowa.

old habit
circling paydays
on my calendar

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

The next issues of the Asahi Haikuist Network appear July 5 and 19. You are invited to send a haiku about passing summer in the city or summering at a cottage, 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).