he was the boy who ran the high school relay alone
--Patrick Sweeney (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)

* * *

quiet river
on one bank a fisherman,
on the other a cricket
--Zelyko Funda (Varazdin, Croatia)

* * *

large aquarium
my stillness
as the shark swims by
--Richard L. Matta (San Diego, California)

* * *

Back and forth fish go
Up and down the man strides
Eye to eye they met
--Anne Marie McHarg (London, England)

* * *

boats’ soft pastels
I used to be able
to look
--Robert Hirschfield (New York)

* * *

kingfisher
perched on a sunny post
wriggling fish in its bill
--Masumi Orihara (Atsugi, Kanagawa)

* * *

Strange clouds--
white fish swallow
a flock of birds
--Zoran Antonijevic (Mladenovac, Serbia)

* * *

Powerful winds blow
swimming well in the blue sky
many carp streamers
--Kairi Ueno (Kagoshima)

* * *

bone broth
these fever chills
go deep
--C. Jean Downer (White Rock, British Columbia)

* * *

Bubblegum pink lake
Salt three-spined stickleback fish
Vain to the bottom
--Zoe Mahfouz (London, England)

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

mermaid parade…
a summer
observance
--Jerome Berglund (New Orleans, Louisiana)

The haikuist hopes to be swimming at Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York, on June 21. Participants at an event held there will dress up in handmade costumes as mermaids, fish, sharks, and Neptune, the god of the sea. Roberta Beach Jacobson penned a cat’s meow in Indianola, Iowa.

plenty
of fish heads for all…
harbor cats

In today’s column, haikuists share fishy stories. Tomislav Maretic was inspired by the fascinating story of the migratory lives of marble trout in “The Enchanted Angler” by Antun Mates in 2005. Murasaki Sagano figuratively threw three lines together hoping to catch the antics of Japanese river trout (ayu), categorized as a poetic summer reference in her haiku almanac (saijiki).

summer brook--
tiny fish swim against
the slow flow

* * *

Up and down
the stream’s surface, leap
circus trout

Horst Ludwig’s brother has been dead for two decades but lives vigorously in his fondest fishing story.

Caught trout by mere hand
in a fast creek, my brother
alive in my mind

Pitt Buerken caught a fresh memory on Father’s Day in Munster, Germany. Mirela Brailean enjoyed a long tale in Iasi, Romania.

dad in the creek
angling for a trout
with bare hands

* * *

fishing stories
in grandpa’s the fish
keeps on growing

Orihara read the tabloid papers while eating a very tasty lunch of crispy battered codfish fillet and fried potatoes when she visited the United Kingdom. Anna Goluba unwrapped a flash frozen fish in Warsaw, Poland.

cheap gossip
wrapped in yesterday’s news
fish ’n’ chips

* * *

Breaking news
Distrust in the eyes
Of the frozen fish

In Tokyo, Tim Chamberlain made mouth-watering Japanese dumplings filled with ground shrimp, cabbage, chives, ginger, and garlic. Nudurupati Nagasri’s haiku enhanced the sensory experience of eating on a hot day in Hyderabad, India. Monica Kakkar savored time in Chandigarh, India.

Quiet Sunday afternoon
--wife and I
pleating gyoza

* * *

terrace heat--
crispy papad wafer in hand,
a Japanese fan

* * *

summer at its best--
never in a hurry
grandma’s fish curry

David Cox headed to the sea in springtime. Near Sligo Surf and the Wild Atlantic Way at Strandhill Beach, Ireland, he composed this haiku inspired by William Butler Yeats’ 1916 poem, “Easter.”

awful beauty
polishes the Sligo stones…
plunging, spilling, surging

Orca watching season was in full swing, so Curt Linderman decided to hangout for a while in Seattle “on one of the few strips of sandy beach along the Puget Sound.” Gray whales migrate there in early spring, while humpbacks are frequently seen through June. Keith Evetts spoke up for the gulp-feeding baleen species.

sea birds watching me
watching the water for whales
teased by the whitecaps

* * *

don’t we just
love anchovies
humpback whale!

Mary L. Leopkey was awake before sunrise fishing in the Strait of Georgia near Texada Island, British Columbia.

half moon
high dives--at 4 a.m.
fish frolic

Dagmara Wieczorkowska’s pet dined well in Wroclaw, Poland. Where there’s fish, the captain’s cat can’t be far away, noted John Richard Stephens in Maui, Hawaii.

tuna sashimi
a glimpse of pink
in the cat’s mouth

* * *

rising and falling,
the kitten’s ecstatic dance
mirrors the fireflies

Here’s a calm line that was cast by Yosa Buson in 1763: haru no umi hinemosu notari notari kana

The sea at springtime
rising and falling, rising
and falling all day

Stephens teamed up with John Gribble in Tokyo to compose this gentle sketch.

quiet afternoon,
soft paws bat at a flower
playing with their prey

Glorija Lukina took her puppy to a beach in Croatia.

finally, the day
for my pet to swim--
first time in the sea

Bona M. Santos sketched this beach scene in Los Angeles, California: park jazz waves of bobbing heads

Olivier-Gabriel Humbert boiled a pot full of fish and vegetables in Les Avenieres, France.

bouillabaisse
Mediterranean sunset
for both of us

Tuna fry (bonito) swim north along the Kuroshio Black Current from the Philippine Sea and pass near Tokyo by June on their annual migration to the northern sea around Hokkaido. Kobayashi Issa penned this line about what he heard everyone talking about in 1820: musashi no wa fuji to katsuo ni yo ga akenu

Musashi Plain--
Mount Fuji and bonito
on everyone’s mind

Noting that bonito is a summer-season word in her poetry almanac, Sagano penned this haiku.

Tiger lilies
vanish in grilled fish smoke
fragrance, too

Eels lay their eggs to the west of the Mariana Islands. After hatching, the young glass eels (shirasu unagi) drift northward off the coast of Taiwan on the Kuroshio Current. John Zheng penned this slippery line: time an eel no one can catch

Writing from Toronto, Ontario, Veronika Zora Novak alluded to troubled water.

Upstream…
a darkness
spawns

Increasingly warmer oceans, created by climate change, have made it easier for those eel larvae to be carried farther north--even as far as Japan’s northernmost island where they grow into adulthood. In Hokkaido, Ruka Kiyokawa imaginatively penned this haiku thinking that “everyone, from adults to children, is swimming.” Kanon Takahashi sketched his haiku in Sapporo.

Spring sky
children and also adults
everyone swimming

* * *

Carp streamers swimming
children laugh and run below
parents wish for health

Seeing carp streamers fly in Tokyo made Monique Bae think of the endless imaginations of children and the importance of them having a community to support them in going after their dreams. Nicoletta Ignatti observed a similar scene in Castellana Grotte, Italy. Marilyn Henighan enjoyed the sight in Ottawa, Ontario.

imaginations hoisted up
shaped into dreams
swimming upstream

* * *

from early morning
noses up--
carp in the wind

* * *

blue fish
fluttering in the wind
Japanese curtain

Most of the migratory swimmers, however, are captured enroute and raised in aquaculture farms until maturity to be eaten at kabayaki style grills during the hottest midsummer days. Ed Bremson whistled contentedly on a hot day in Raleigh, North Carolina. Wieczorkowska peered inside a gleaming pail.

trip to town...
seawater in a bucket
a fish for sale

* * *

silver moon--
the fish barrel
finally full

Sagano can’t wait for the saury to migrate, literally referred to as the autumn knife fish. Mahfouz wrote that she is “is in the mood for fish.”

Tired of sashimi
longing for well-done grilled fish
silvery sanma

* * *

Fresh out of water
Fish rain, crackers shattering
Ancient planet drill

Last autumn, Philip Davison had his eye on a roe-filled Atlantic hen sweeping her tailfin in an Irish river.

the calm water flash
refracted in the eye of
a leaping salmon

Tony Williams claims that “there is something undeniably romantic about watching the salmon’s epic struggle to return to its spawning ground… in Scotland.”

lovelocks
on the salmon bridge
hearts a-leaping

Fattened tuna fish return in the opposite direction on a migratory route in the autumn on their way to southern spawning waters. If the fish go astray, unusual out-of-season winter catches of the tasty lost fish end up in sushi restaurants. The master poet Yosa Buson (1716-1783) enjoyed eating cold fish: Kogarashi ni agito fukaruru ya kaki no uo

In wintery wind
gills puffing--
a hooked fish

Best seen in November, Nuri Rosegg awaited the constellation Pisces overhead Oslo, Norway.

night-fishing
hiding behind the clouds
The Fish

Last winter in Kelowna, British Columbia, Michele Rule bored a hole in an ice-covered lake that was named by the Okanagan Syilx people for its many colors and the rainbow trout which live there.

ice fishing on Kalamalka lake
a rainbow beneath our feet

At the start of the year 1767 when days lengthened, and the sun strengthened, Buson likely grinned hungrily when he saw the shiny, silvery heads of sardines (iwashi) hung outside the entrance of houses to keep evil spirits away: hi no hikari kesa ya iwashi no kashira yori

The light of the sun
this morning
from the head of a sardine

A student of haiku at the International University of Kagoshima, Sota Yamashita composed this brilliant haiku to capture the image of the fishing lure he handmade with a shiny wooden pencil.

Zigzagging on blue
top pencil dancing, teasing...
a strike breaks the calm

Tracy Davidson wiggled her toes in Warwickshire, England. Allen David Simon was fascinated by pollywogs in Kolkata, India.

whitebait
a fascination of fish
around bare feet

* * *

flutters of a flag
wiggling tadpole tails
in the shallow pond

His classmate, Emi Tarumizura composed this line while fishing in Kinko Bay, Kagoshima: small fish swim under the pier hiding their breath

Melissa Dennison was surprised to see what flowed in with the rising waters in Bradford, U.K.

swimming through
the cobbles of the old town
shoals of fish

Ashoka Weerakkody’s eyes likely peered over the top of his novel from time to time while he read on the beach in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

the fish
in Benchley’s “Jaws”
hidden volcano

McHarg enjoyed a whimsical day watching gray heron, beavers and shy eyes peer from long grasses in the English countryside.

A rod in hand
River winding before me
Waiting for the bite

Matta and his dad caught memories.

trout fishing
this time Dad asks me
to wade upstream

Maya Daneva might have weathered through a nightmare in The Hague, Netherlands.

raging waves
a giant jellyfish
embraces me

Paul Callus witnessed the escape of undersized fish offshore Safi, Malta. Glorija Lukina penned an incongruous sight in Zagreb, Croatia. Mona Bedi refreshed her tank in Delhi, India.

hauling…
slipping out of the net
dink and moon shards

* * *

on a boat
floating on the sea--
a pet shark

* * *

reef aquarium
I bring home
the ocean

Eva Limbach served up lunch in Saarbruecken, Germany. Timothy Daly took off from Bordeaux-Merignac Airport, France.

escaped from the sharks
this tiny fish
in my frying pan

* * *

departure lounge
like my late goldfish
leaping free

From Karachi, Pakistan, Yasir Farooq imagined: under and over the ocean a thousand planes

Natalia Kuznetsova lamented the plight of beauty in Moscow, Russia.

goldfish
doomed to please the human eye...
destiny

Marie Derley circulated around the room during a business meeting in Ath, Belgium.

teambuilding lunch
fishes of all kinds
in the fish soup

At work in Paris, France, an image congealed in Emil Karla’s mind that he “cannot get rid of,” so he figured he would “write it down and try to send it away.”

fish trying to breathe
the long quiet hours
in the office building

Philmore Place in Minsk, Belarus, and Alan Maley in Canterbury, England, respectively, remind us to be more careful with the fishes’ precious habitat.

boat pier
sand on the seashore
stained with black oil

* * *

this sludge of slime slips
down the throat of the river--
death sentence for fish

Ignatti misses her son.

that recurring dream
of my son...
fish and chips

Luciana Moretto is wary of fish on the menu at restaurants in Treviso, Italy. Zheng sketched a haiku at Mississippi Valley State University near the Mississippi River, a reflective moment that may have floated as far as the Gulf of America. Kimberly Kuchar beachcombed in Texas.

microplastics...
today’s special
a majestic grouper

* * *

a belly-up fish
in the dreamcatcher
waning moon

* * *

tossing the starfish…
just a drop in the ocean
or one life saved?

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

The next issues of the Asahi Haikuist Network appear July 4 and 18. You are invited to send a haiku about Independence Day in America or Marine Day in Japan, 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).