News anchor’s smile after an update on war absurdity
--Murasaki Sagano (Tokyo)

* * *

right side of her face,
the worst ticks I’ve ever seen…
bureau chief reports
--Junko Saeki (Tokyo)

* * *

cease-fire meeting--
Tibetan sand mandala
blowing in the wind
--Masumi Orihara (Atsugi, Kanagawa)

* * *

rising sun--
bowing before
dawn’s torii gate
--John Richard Stephens (Kihei, Hawaii)

* * *

garden wedding
a flicker of the bride’s smile
as butterflies mate
--Chen-ou Liu (Ajax, Ontario)

* * *

lying in the yard
looking up... a spider
crawls across the moon
--Sherri J Moye-Dombrosky (Liberty, South Carolina)

* * *

bed-ridden
gazing into the void
origami fish
--Nuri Rosegg (Oslo, Norway)

* * *

summer insomnia--
lace curtains unveil the moon
every now and then
--Steliana Cristina Voicu (Ploiesti, Romania)

* * *

the old bachelor
died last winter--now no one
to tend his thin vines
--Alan Maley (Canterbury, England)

* * *

explosion from
bottlebrush’s spike…
red fireworks
--Stephen J. DeGuire (Los Angeles, California)

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

hibiscuses
no longer hear their voices
in Okinawa
--Murasaki Sagano (Tokyo)

Graveside flowers provided heartfelt messages to guide the haikuist across time. Giuliana Ravaglia in Bologna, Italy, and Arvinder Kaur in Chandigarh, India, respectively, marked the passing of time.

the moonlight
on the muddy fields
empty trenches

* * *

moonlight
spilled in the trenches
war ends

Realizing that time will never heal the lust to fight, the Sicilian poet Salvatore Quasimodo (1901-1968) began writing:

You are still a man of the sling and of the stone, man of my time.

In today’s column, haikuists prayed for an end to endless wars. Yutaka Kitajima solemnly danced for his deceased ancestors in Joetsu, Niigata Prefecture.

Bon dancers...
all are modest near
paradise

Beata Czeszejko visited a cemetery for unknown soldiers in Warsaw, Poland. John Hawkhead whispered the names of the fallen in Bradford on Avon, U.K. Laila Brahmbhatt interpreted an omen.

battlefield red
poppies stretch up
to the sky

* * *

breaks in the clouds
children play hide and seek
amongst the headstones

* * *

Poppies
cross the border
peace talks begin

Ron Scully might have bitten his tongue in Burien, Washington.

fireworks gunsmoke
my son on my shoulders
first taste of war

Richard L. Matta paused for a dramatic, but deceptive, lull before a bomb cyclone hit San Diego, California. David Cox penned a poem while driving down interstate 20 towards Odessa, Texas. Richard Bailly raised a warning in Fargo, North Dakota. Julie Ann Lebitania surrendered in Sorsogon, Philippines.

how fleeting
the eye of the storm
Independence Day

* * *

gushing water
down the interstate…
Impermanence

* * *

willful
independent
red flag

* * *

leafless trees
birds return slowly
white flags wave

Lakshman Bulusu penned this haiku in Princeton, New Jersey. Minko Tanev visited the National Museum of Military History in Sofia, Bulgaria.

heroes’ pride
reaches skies
cheers rise high

* * *

battle flags
in the museum of glory--
two world wars

Luciana Moretto employed a metaphor for the atomic bomb… and compared it to human frailty.

The Great Wave
still impending danger...
let us pray

M.R. Pelletier might have visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Stephens connected the then and now of war memories. Rita Pomade penned a recollection for a haiku group in Montreal, Quebec.

photos of shadows
burned into stone
no rice in their bowls

* * *

Nagasaki--
burning embers
fireflies

* * *

in the ashes
of war’s end
burnt memories

Eighty years ago, at noon on Aug. 15, 1945, Emperor Hirohito’s announcement of Japan’s acceptance of the terms of surrender was broadcast by radio. Saeki was 7 years old at that time, hiding in a mountain village in Kofu, Yamanashi Prefecture. She said she “remembers everything so vividly, even the clear blue sky,” yet she felt “something was strange because the American air planes were flying extremely low in the morning. Everyone stood erect outside in small groups.” When the Emperor’s declaration of defeat was over, she felt sleepy, and said she couldn’t recall anything else about the extraordinary day from that moment on.

the Emperor tells his subjects,
suffer the insufferable and
bear the unbearable

The language of wartime poets reveals the path taken by those who lost their hold on the Earth when everything fractured. Philmore Place reached out from Minsk, Belarus.

collapsed world
old man in the ruins
a rescued puppy

In Osaka, Teiichi Suzuki spent such an unpleasant night that he lost his balance getting out of bed. By morning, his eyes were so dry he irrigated them again and again in the summer heat.

Sultry night
my hands and feet dream
different dreams

* * *

Blue planet--
eye drops
overflow

Barbara Anna Gaiardoni dressed for church in Verona, Italy. The haikuist observed the Aug. 15 holy day commemorating the Virgin Mary’s ascendence into heaven.

a simple stole
for the evening mass
Assumption Day

In Kansas City, Missouri, Phillips felt trapped in a forever war.

wonder how long
the war will be...
Independence Day

The signing of Japan’s formal surrender was solemnized on Sept. 2, 1945, aboard a U.S. flagship in Tokyo Bay. Kitajima composed a haiku to mark not only the 80th anniversary of the surrender, but also his worry about where to take refuge if “Article 9 (of the Constitution) is going to be thrown overboard.”

“Annihilate first
the enemy missile base”
--your sanity first

Slawa Sibiga stared toward the bottom of the sea. Joanna Ashwell looked down to her feet.

Sea festival
on deck, nothing is heard
except the water

* * *

surrendering
to the ant
bare toes

Mihovila Ceperic passed by yachts owned by “rich Russians and Ukrainians in the harbor of Rijeka, Croatia.”

downwind
flags of two nations at war
morning in the harbor

Mel Goldberg saluted fallen brethren who returned to Ajijic, Mexico, in coffins.

treaties signed
soldiers return
flag-draped caskets

Stoianka Boianova longed for good news to reach Sofia, Bulgaria.

we wait with hope for
beloved people from the front
a peace agreement

In Castellana Grotte, Italy, Nicoletta Ignatti bottled two ingredients that go well together.

putting capers
in vinegar--
peace agreements

Most of us reach for poetry at significant moments such as death and funerals because poems help express feelings that are difficult to express. Luciana Moretto prayed in a small room built in Treviso, Italy, by her father soon after World War II ended.

the villagers
around the votive chapel
mass for my father

Jessica Allyson lay flowers at the National War Memorial in Canada, also known as “The Response,” a tall, granite memorial arch with bronze sculptures that stands in Ottawa, Ontario. Ivan Georgiev watched a woman carry flowers in Gottingen, Germany.

swords surrendered
the blood we shed drying
on the armistice

* * *

after the armistice
her bouquet of withered
sweet violets

Sanjana Zorinc felt moved by the Adriatic Sea near Bjelovar, Croatia. Lilia Racheva attended a ceremony to send off the spirits of the dead from Rousse, Bulgaria.

a thousand suns
sway in the harbour
at sunrise

* * *

manifestation,
thousands of lanterns light up
the marine park

Writing from Dehradun, India, Govind Joshi offered a little something for everyone.

ship steward serving
mixed fruit desserts
the world crew

Tsanka Shishkova launched a little folded paper wish in Sofia, Bulgaria. A decorated sailor himself, Marek Printer’s sons launched ships in Kielce, Poland.

origami boat
on the calm surface
morning sea

* * *

Marine Day
my sons give names to
paper boats

Florian Munteanu dreads to think about what lies at the bottom of the Black Sea near Bucharest, Romania.

full of bombs
a battleship wreck
under the sea

Liu had nothing more to say.

the staccato
of July 4th fireworks ...
what’s left unsaid

Nothing disrupted Mike Fainzilber’s moment of silence in Rehovot, Israel.

all quiet on the front
reinforcements train
arriving empty

Krzysztof Kokot shed a tear in rainy Nowy Targ, Poland.

rainy bugle call--
a child recites a poem
about the heroes

Gordana Vlasic listened to Nino Rossi’s 1965 bugle call “Il Silenzio” in Oroslavje, Croatia.

the end of the war
silence in the common cemetery…
only Silence is heard

The German word for cease-fire, “Waffenstillstand,” evoked a sense of silence in Emil Karla in Paris, France, on the anniversary of Victory in Europe Day when the Nazis signed an unconditional surrender agreement.

as the wind ceases
garden sounds come to life
8th of May

Saeki was struck by this line from a historical Korean drama she was watching on television: Facing unfavorable battles, generals step back, kings step forwards.

August
the Imperial army
all Kings

Margaret Ponting dedicated this poem to her brother on his 80th birthday in Victoria, Australia.

given a quilt of valour
for courage, proud but
felt he didn’t deserve it

Zahra Mughis put her hand over her heart in Lahore, Pakistan. Ponting beach-combed for stones that sing.

racing beat
the cool
of morning dew

* * *

I hold the pebble
in my hand...
waiting for its song

“Love is in the air” on Texada Island, British Columbia, where Mary L. Leopkey lives. In Tokyo, Murasaki Sagano sized up a dinner companion. So as not to wake a sleeping giant, Brahmbhatt could have whispered, “make love not war.”

hummingbirds
male and female flirt
mid-air tag

* * *

Casablanca
seems likely to chat
about love

* * *

Sleeping soldiers
lipstick on mustaches...
morning patrol

Uday Shankar lives in Bihar, India, “the Land of Buddha,” not so far from the border with Nepal and its glacier-covered Himalayan mountains.

Japan is at home--
with glaciers
boundaries melt away

Patrick Sweeney recalled how he eased his pain when a border conflict between the two Koreas ended in a stalemate with an armistice signed on July 27, 1953.

The thirty-eighth parallel...
banana whiskey
in the bloodstream

Kathy Watts remembered how she was just “a college kid at the University of Maryland, College Park, barely 10 miles from Washington, D.C., and it was the site of many protests and protesters” when the Paris Peace Accords were signed in 1973. Writing from Draguignan, France, Francoise Maurice realizes “wars always end badly.”

recalling Vietnam
how we fought it for years then
killed the funding

* * *

another end of war
the white flag mended
with cross-stitches

Joanna Ashwell searched her thesaurus. Urszula Marciniak picked edible chanterelles in Lodz, Poland.

finding a word
for sorrow
blood-soaked borders

* * *

at the border forest
women are talking again
picking mushrooms

Pelletier referred to a history book in Topeka, Kansas.

a rifle left
upright in a trench--
stripes torn from a uniform

For a precious moment, Dejan Ivanovic might have felt as though he were the last man standing in Lazarevac, Serbia.

leaving the trench
the entire wide sky
for my two eyes

Paul Callus in Safi, Malta, reminds us that soldiers fight long after wars end.

end of war--
a soldier combats
post-traumatic stress

Doubting war will ever come to an end, Munteanu replayed the music to Oliver Stone’s 2016 film about the whistleblower Edward Snowden.

the warrior’s clock
on the soundtrack “Veil”
won’t stop...

Gordana Kurtovic “survived one war… in Croatia” but fears that for many other “unfortunate people, the end is not in sight.” Natalia Kuznetsova agrees wars will end in Moscow, Russia. Writing from Glasgow, Scotland, Tony Williams suggested that war’s aftermath for families is often a collective suffering and sadness.

a wounded child
in his mother’s arms
the war continues

* * *

all wars end but...
umpteen orphaned children
and those unborn

* * *

parent’s grief--
a ribbon runs
through a war-torn land

On a sticky hot afternoon in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Sweeney began pulling on this line:

Optimum Turkish Taffy-stretch

Helga Stania spotted a deep-red spotted flower in Ettiswil, Switzerland. Red headwear is traditionally worn by Sikhs on celebratory occasions.

the bench
at a lonely height
turban lily

John S. Gilbertson wilted on a hot day in Greenville, South Carolina.

The lilies
droop down
as war ends

Pippa Phillips picked a quick-growing annual flower that signifies victory and conquest to compose this line:

how the battle will end the nasturtiums

On a cloudy day in Parma, Italy, Mario Massimo Zontini wondered how the current war in Europe might end.

overcast sky
in the field the sunflowers
are confused

Daniela Misso said she found “some relief by going out for a wheelchair walk” along a country road in San Gemini, Italy. Shishkova looked toward the heights of heaven at the galactic center of the universe.

finding peace
in a world of wars
chamomile path

* * *

white lily shining
in the hand of Buddha
Milky Way season

Having relocated to Leighton Buzzard, U.K., Iliyana Stoyanova wished upon a star that “hopefully things will start to look better soon.”

Moments
after dusk
a lonely star

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

Wars never end at http://www.asahi.com/ajw/special/haiku/. The next issue of the Asahi Haikuist Network appears Aug. 29. Readers are invited to send haiku about an endless summer 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).