Woman in the apple orchard snake
--Tsanka Shishkova (Sofia, Bulgaria)

* * *

chill of the shadow
before I pick
a ripe apple
--Marek Printer (Kielce, Poland)

* * *

on the way to school
there’s still half left--
grandma’s apple pie
--Wieslaw Karlinski (Namyslow, Poland)

* * *

maple tree
I will write my death haiku
in its shadow
--Mel Goldberg (Ajijic, Mexico)

* * *

cemetery grounds--
a Black and a white veteran
rake the leaves
--Leah Ann Sullivan (Nagoya)

* * *

windy day
his toy truck’s bed
full of leaves
--King Edward Eway (Janiuay, Philippines)

* * *

children’s laughter
under the mango canopy
a treehouse
--Tuyet Van Do (Melbourne, Australia)

* * *

there she is
rising from the porch--
mother-in-law’s tongue
--David Cox (Shenzhen, China)

* * *

whistling
in the shade
of the hanging tree
--Mike Fainzilber (Rehovot, Israel)

* * *

through the lime trees’ leaves,
autumn sunlight filtering--
a shiver of wind…
--Alan Maley (Canterbury, England)

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

hide-and-seek
in an oak’s boughs
first love
--Rosemarie Schuldes (Mattsee, Austria)

The haikuist likely recalled carving the initials (R.S. + ??) into a tree with her lover. Jackie Chou became a realist in Pico Rivera, California.

tree trunk graffiti
my name not carved
inside his heart

Lidia Iwanowska-Szymanska, curator of the Royal Lazienki Museum in Warsaw, translated one of her works that was originally penned in Polish.

children by the road
hanging from the thin branches
crabapples in red

K. Ramesh will follow the haikuist path tonight in Chennai, India. Schuldes becomes a romanticist at dusk.

full moon...
a trail of paddy grains
on the path

* * *

harvest moon
converting scarecrows to
knights in shining armour

Printer’s grandchild surprised him. Although wanting to stay longer, Patrick Sweeney acquiesced to his children’s pleas.

hide and seek
a mound of dry leaves
suddenly moves

* * *

moon viewing...
they’re cold
and want to go home

Valincia Richard steadied a garden saw in Sunflower, Mississippi. Fatma Zohra Habis always felt protected by her mother in Algiers, Algeria.

green vines cut
through wood fence
cut or not cut

* * *

mother’s old coat
bird stands safe
on the scarecrow

In Berne, Switzerland, Linus Blessing loves Louis Armstrong’s 1905 jazz song line: “Mama, when the voice that I heard, like the song of the bird Seemed to whisper sweet music to me…”

in the shade of
the old apple tree--
Satchmo brings back my beloved

Gray skies in Oslo, Norway, were colored with a song for Nuri Rosegg.

a serenade
fills my heart with
fifty shades of love

Barbara Anna Gaiardoni recalled the flavor of friendship in Verona, Italy. Margaret Ponting observed a sacred tree in Mildura on the Murray river in Australia. Ron Scully dreamed peacefully in Burien, Washington. Helga Stania cherished a day last season in Ettiswil, Switzerland.

in the shadow
of an ancient pine tree
barbecue with friends

* * *

latji latji people encircle
gnarled river red gum
ancient meeting place

* * *

in the shade
of our reading tree
the peace we dreamed

* * *

a summer day
to remember…
acer tree shadow

Daniela Misso said she paused “under the shade of a poplar tree” beside Lake Turano, Italy, “struck by the vibrant green colour both on the water surface and of the leaves.” Maley peered deep inside.

rustling of leaves
the emerald green water
of a lake

* * *

through this willow screen
autumn sun pours lime-green light
deep into the pool...

This year, some of the world’s largest trees were either felled or burned down in Canadian forests--considered critical to containing global warming. Loggers in Ontario harvested 100-year-old-growth trees and terrible blazes ravaged whole forests and homes. Fortunately, John Hamley’s place in Marmora, Ontario, was unscathed, and A.D. MacDonald was able to visit family safely in the prairies of Alberta.

News of war
and the deer
in my garden

* * *

Straw watchman
Guards moonlit wheat
Canvas smile

Florian Munteanu filled his rescue dog’s water bowl in Bucharest, Romania.

a scarecrow
its tongue hanging out
the dog chases a crow

Charlie Smith was raking reddish-brown leaves at home in Raleigh, North Carolina, nicknamed the City of Oaks. Veterinarians in his Wake County neighborhood treat the most snakebites in the United States.

dog cornered
between two coiled copperheads
neither blinks

Francis Attard wasn’t worried by a meter-long coiling line in the woodlands of Marsa, Malta: leopard snake lacks the killing bite coils in fear

Burning leaves emit harmful carbon dioxide gases into the atmosphere. Stubble-burning on a farm in Fargo, North Dakota, got out of hand, according to Richard Bailly.

controlled cornfield-burn
a raging forest-fire
scarecrow missing

Satoru Kanematsu locked up a log cabin. Joshua St. Claire listened to songs all night long.

No more smoke
from the old chimney
flitting bats

* * *

Muldoon’s haiku
an enterprising mockingbird
learns batsong

Luciana Moretto slowly ate, and read about, her favorite French puff pastry made with what seems like a thousand layers of flaky crust and cream.

leafing through
a mille-feuille book
sweet autumn

Nancie Zivetz-Gertler wrote this haiku while 15 wildfires were burning in Oregon.

where is solitude
if not in the wilderness
that’s burning away

Deborah Karl-Brandt in Bonn, Germany, noted that relentless wars also add to the current climate crisis.

world at war
so many grasses burned
in prairie fires

Milan Rajkumar fears wildfires and ethnic conflicts will soon burn up the state of Manipur, India. Trees were burned, lawns were torched and even temple roofs were set on fire. Having retired to West Palm Beach, Florida, Laurie Kuntz feared the thought of an endless storm. Giuliana Ravaglia weighed in with her illuminated thoughts from Bologna, Italy.

razed village...
not even a drop of rain
to settle the dust

* * *

The squall of war
hits a canopy of elms:
Unprotected

* * *

so light
the weight of the shadows--
full moon

Maley longed for an autumn wind and cooler heads.

the world turns and burns--
and the hot air from their mouths
only fans the flames…

Tejendra Sherchan described a toxic and prickly situation in Kathmandu, Nepal. Bonnie J. Scherer saved a sprig in Palmer, Alaska.

the spines
of a devil’s tomato leaf
hold a maple leaf

* * *

bringing home
a bit of wilderness
twig tinsel in my hair

Richard L. Matta procrastinated fixing a screen door in San Diego, California. Writing from Varazdin, Croatia, Zelyko Funda invoked a sense of trepidation when darkness fell onto a red poppy--symbol for the remembrance of wars and hope for a peaceful future.

the door squeaks open
the door slams shut
peace talks

* * *

a scarecrow
overshadowing
a poppy

Natalia Kuznetsova figuratively signaled for help from Moscow, Russia. Melissa Dennison must have felt strangled when she switched to wearing winter clothes in Bradford, England.

the lonely scarecrow
waving to the harvest moon...
silent minefields

* * *

a scarf winds
tightly around the scarecrow
cold moon

When the male wasps and a new queen left their paper home, Cox thought it prudent to pull it down rather than burn it. Maley came to the rescue of a lumbering bee.

ceasefire--
slowly easing away
a hornet’s nest

* * *

desperate bumble-bee,
legs trapped in a spider’s web--
I free them--with care…

Carl Brennan overturned a terracotta flower pot on his porch in North Syracuse, New York.

Disused planter
a great golden digger wasp
digs his new home

* * *

Lunar craters...
the great golden digger wasp
made my planter his

St. Claire watched insects polish off fallen fruit in York County, Pennsylvania.

golden hour
dumbledores drunk
on rotting peaches

Luciana Moretto longs for tonight’s moon to rise over Treviso, Italy.

giant supermoon...
night when impossible
desires come true

Marek Printer likely saw beavers gnawing branches to finish their lodges and to build dams in Kielce, Poland.

full moon
the water on the rapids
even whiter

The bride was fashionably late at a wedding Monica Kakkar attended in Bengaluru, India.

even the bridegroom
cannot keep his eyes away--
mirror of the moon

* * *

starlit in sari…
enters with an entourage
late for moon viewing

Marilyn Humbert described a peaceful scene in Sydney, Australia.

after foraging
galahs asleep beneath
the harvest moon

Lakshmi Iyer awoke before dawn to enjoy a breakfast of fermented rice with curds and onions, that is said to be “the healthiest food according to most of the farmers of Tamil Nadu, India.”

harvest moon
the pazhaye sor
collects the light

James Penha awaits the beguiling “cuk-lek-li-co” whistling of the Merbah cerukcuk passerine bird in Bali, Indonesia. David Cox spotted a bird in Springfield, Illinois, that should have migrated to Mexico a few weeks ago.

Keats’s nightingale
lingers longer in England
where autumn stays warm

* * *

mid-autumn
goldfinch
on the sidewalk

Kanematsu bid “bon voyage until next spring” to his feathered friends.

Flying high
departing swallows
sunset glow

Leon Tefft tossed a plastic green paratrooper as high as he could in Greenville, South Carolina.

never sure
which way the wind will blow
parachute toy

After Robin Rich’s eldest child left Brighton, England, and headed off to university, the haikuist packed up toys and washed the laundry that had been left behind.

snap of the fingers
a broken spinning top
another leaf falls

* * *

a sheet pulls
an autumn wind
empty nest

Pippa Phillips longs to see leaves again in St. Louis, Missouri.

streetlamp--
how much you have to squint
to pretend you’re in a forest

After traveling through forests in Africa, Roberta Beach Jacobson returned home to Indianola, Iowa, and--well, you guessed it.

I close my door
mopane leaves
call me back

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

The next issue of the Asahi Haikuist Network appears on Nov. 29. Readers are invited to send haiku about the rising prices of groceries 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).