Asahi Highquest Network/David McMurray

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apples
Covered with a layer of sugar
Stock trading
–Rosemary Shouldis (Matze, Austria)

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Aomori apples at the airport
The danger of all
leave
–Patrick Sweeney (Misawa, Aomori)

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Dusty trail…
Steam rises from the fresh
Horse apples
–Steven J. DeGuire (Los Angeles, California)

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Ripe figs and crisp apples
Long summer nights
I remember you and me
–C.X. Turner (Birmingham, England)

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Watermelon core
Bright red square on the tip of the knife
New love show
–Noga Shimmer (Storrs, Connecticut)

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The blooming universe
Enjoy a few
Chocolate bites
–Orrin Prejean (Dallas, Texas)

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Filled birdbath
Sparrows chatter chatter
Shoulder to shoulder
–Galia (Lafayette, Louisiana)

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Sipping tea
Two old friends
Rose of Sharon
–Terry Jacks (Balwin, Missouri)

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Late autumn
Sitting on a lawn chair
Next to my mother
–Richard Bailey (Fargo, North Dakota)

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From the notebook
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Hot and humid night..
A neighborhood that belongs
To the fox and the skunk
–Karl Brennan (North Syracuse, New York)

The haiku poet breathed in the night air. Earlier this summer, Jennifer Gurney shared a scene from her daily life in Broomfield, Colorado. Randall Herman, writing from Victoria, Texas, heard the approach of an agile spotted deer native to Japan.

Deer and their fawns
A walk in my backyard
While I hang the laundry

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Sika deer…
Leaves rustle from
North

Sheila Weaver and her friend watched some of her garden flowers “fall through the hole” in Gibsons, British Columbia.

Less than a day
These flowers are daylilies
“But the fawn spots are so cute!”

The double meaning of TD Ginting indicates that he will bite in Medan, North Sumatra.

Ice cream rose
better than flower–
Time for (ch) to eat

Eta Grubišić noticed an inevitable scene taking place in Bukovac, Serbia. Vladislav Hristov continues driving down the road in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

Fragrant meadow
Confused butterfly–
Easy prey

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Hot highway
Lizard loses
His tail

Kiyoshi Fukuzawa wondered who had delivered a bunch of beautiful, sweet-smelling purple flowers.

Lavender
On the road side
Was it a gust of wind?

Morning glories, hibiscus, and rose of Sharon (a favorite of Matsuo Basho’s horse) are now in full bloom on their soaring stems. Amulya Kamalnath spotted a climber in the Nagarahole forests in Karnataka state, India.

red flower
High flames intertwine between them
Jungle vines

An elegant climbing vine serves as a backdrop In her garden, Liz Gibbs lay in Calgary, Alberta, likely listening to a recording of Canadian soprano Teresa Stratas. Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, poetry, and theater, was often depicted in literature and art as wreathed in ivy.

Soft opera sound
My ivy trails
Towards the soprano

Writing from Sofia, Bulgaria, Tsanka Shishkova dreamed of relaxing in Santorini, Greece: Lily of the Sand…an island in the Aegean Sea with white summer houses

Suraj Nanu may have been wearing a silk sari billowing on the Arabian Sea near Kerala, India.

Shape me
In the fluctuations of the wind
Ocean summer

Jerome Berglund reconciled in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Make my own
Peace be with her
Small plates

Françoise Meurice wore a lightweight cotton cloth to celebrate her wedding anniversary in Draguignon, France: a muslin dress fluttering in the wind – The Song of the Cicada

Satoru Kanematsu said he hopes to vacation on Guam again.

Sunglasses–
Mine is a little darker
From my wife

While touring Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the Ashoka Weerakudi group got so close to a skyscraper so tall that it was difficult to see the entire building. Instead, he stared at a tourist wearing stylish dark glasses and looking up at the sky. Teiichi Suzuki visited the Osaka Tennoji Zoo.

On her sunglasses
In front of Twin Towers
The twin towers

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Towering cloud
It spreads to small eyes
From the elephant

Maria Sisa’s feelings were shadowed by gloomy thoughts in Magli, a town at the heel of booted Italy.

Nostalgia
Mountain shadow
It obscures the flowers

While trying to escape an urban heat island, Marshall Hrysuke is pulled into a cozy underground train tunnel. In response to a prompt in a previous Asahi Haikuist Network column, he offered two lines to form a linked traditional verse pattern (haikai no renga), noting that “it is not every day that a poet is associated with the hakō of Basho’s works.” Suzuki wrote three lines when he reappeared at Osaka-Umeda Station after riding underground on the Midosuji Line. Tzitzka Eleva spent a long, hot summer in Marietta, Georgia.

Koto notes
Below the Toronto subway

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Summer dawn–
Subway carries empty shells
At night

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My summer
Under the dome of heat…
Rust colored scarf

After experiencing wildfires and heatwaves in Canada, she called summer flowers her day. Sophia Conway killed her garden on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Haiku poet Petrok weeds in Seattle, Washington. Tony Williams sharpens an ax in Glasgow, Scotland.

Withered rose–
A reminder to forget
Summer Love

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Nodding
Outside a nursing home
Dandelion

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Look at the stars…
There is no life left
In plum

Kiyoshi Fukuzawa accepted his fate in Tokyo. In his youth, Mario Massimo Zontini used to wear bolder colors in Parma, Italy.

The colors are gone
Nobody stops saying “beautiful”
Hydrangea

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In full summer
Shadows are subtle
Because of the heat

Vladislav Hristov flirts with a romantic novel in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

Afternoon fog
softness
Book page

Waiting for the cool autumn breeze, Urszula Marciniak pities her pink mallow plants in Warsaw, Poland. Murasaki Sagano realized that its flowers only lasted a day, and noted that it was prolific and prolific. Arvinder Kaur sympathy in Chandigarh, India.

expected…
Rose petals falling one by one
On concrete

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Rose molokhiya
The truth has been highlighted
Flowers one day

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Petal by petal
The rose falls
Test reports

Relentless wildfires, extreme temperatures, and the spectacle of cactus death in the Sonoran Desert, Arizona, led John Daleiden to compose This Summer That Begins with a locally coined name for the dry monsoon season: Unseasonal – Just More Heat in the Next Forecast

Sankara Jayanth Sudanjunta waited for guests in Hyderabad, India.

Seasonal sun…
Birds take their time
On bird feeder

Zontini nursed a drink all afternoon.

sidewalk, coffee–
I wish there was coffee in the cup
It will last forever

Billy knows what he’s doing today in Fargo, North Dakota. Shemer welcomed visitors. Kanematsu felt welcome.

regards
every day
old friend

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Greetings to all guests
Lilac is always first
At the open door

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Greetings to me
Small poppies on the side of the road
Like lost children

After taking a break from climbing a mountain pass through Tokaido in 1663, Matsuo Basho wrote these words in a parody of a 15th-century Noh play: tsuki zo shirube konata e irase tabi no yado. Imagine how the master poet elegantly played the role of the innkeeper by reading this hokku aloud while signaling the open door with a motion of his hand to enter into the full moon.

The moon is your guide…
This way if you please, enter
Our traveler came down

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Enter the door to Haiku’s http://www.asahi.com/ajw/special/haiku/. The next issue of Asahi Haikuist Network will be released on September 29, coinciding with the full Harvest Moon. Readers are invited to send haiku poems inspired by Hoku Matsuo Basho: The Moon as Your Guide… This way, if you please, enter our Traveler’s Lodge, on a postcard to David McMurray at Kagoshima International University, Sakano 8-34-1, Kagoshima, 891 -0197, Japan, or email to (mcmurray@fka.att.ne.jp).

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David McMurray has been writing a column for the Asahi Haikuist Network since April 1995, his first column for the Asahi Evening News. He is a member of the editorial board of the Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku, a columnist for the International Haiku Association, and is the assistant editor of Teaching, a column for The Language Teacher of the Japan Association for Language Learning (JALT).

McMurray is Professor of Intercultural Studies at Kagoshima International University where he lectures on international haiku poetry. In graduate school he supervises students researching haiku. He is a corresponding teacher of English Haiku for the Asahi Cultural Center in Tokyo.

McMurray judges haiku competitions organized by Kagoshima International University, Ito on Oi Ocha, Asahi Cultural Center, Matsuyama City, Polish Haiku Society, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Senanjo Gakuin University, and Just One Tree.

McMurray’s award-winning books include: Teaching and Learning Haiku in English (2022); Just One Haiku Tree, Music and Metaphor (2015); “Canada Project Collected Essays and Poems” Vols. 1-8 (2013); and “Haiku in English as Japanese” (2003).