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The next issues of the Asahi Haikuist Network appear Aug. 6 and 20. Readers are invited to send haiku about a canoe or a sailboat, 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 featuring graduate students in The Language Teacher of the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT).
full of marbles
Kana Shiozaki, a creative writing student at Hokusei Gakuen University, penned this haiku about springtide with an ellipsis that makes readers pause before the third line.
digging in the sand
confidence
Making her debut to this column from New Braunfels, Texas, during a COVID-19 lockdown, Kathleen Vasek Trocmet might have felt her life was experiencing a total lunar eclipse.
anger management
blood moon
Angela Giordano paused with a caesura of excitement: oh, the fireflies. the stars have come down into the garden. In Itta Bena, Mississippi, John Zheng very efficiently cut his lawn and haiku.
yard-mowing
of a firefly
Raegan Bradbury (Misawa, Aomori Prefecture)
The 11-year-old haikuist at Sollars Elementary sketched a peaceful scene of sea turtles returning on the tide to lay eggs on the beach where they were born. His classmate, Aaron Royston, discovered a remarkable stone.
Small ravine
of a stone goddess
Arvinder Kaur alluded to the words of Peggy Willis Lyles (1939-2010), which appeared in a 1980 issue of “Cicada” in Canada: summer night we turn out all the lights to hear the rain.
quarantine
to hear the rain
Noisy Brood X periodical cicadas that remained underground for 17 years are emerging by the trillions now that ground temperatures are soaring over 17 degrees Celsius in North America. Haikuists have to clamor quickly to mark this generation in 17 syllables. Soil warms earlier because of climate change. Before 1950, cicadas used to emerge at the end of May; now they’re already singing. Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) experienced both rain and insect songs in Yamagata Prefecture.