cold moon on the seashore rock a painter’s brush
--Tsanka Shishkova (Sofia, Bulgaria)

* * *

Glass ceiling
Harris hopes to break
“Yes, she can”
--Satoru Kanematsu (Nagoya)

* * *

summer night
the bear claw sky
overwhelms me
--Jerome Berglund (Minneapolis, Minnesota)

* * *

Observed at sunset
a shimmering filament
thread radio waves
--Philip Davison (Dublin, Ireland)

* * *

flashpoint
the moment we realised
we weren’t alone
--Joanna Ashwell (Durham, England)

* * *

shooting stars
shooting dreams
year after year
--Mario Massimo Zontini (Parma, Italy)

* * *

shooting star--
calling again
the days of forgiveness
--Giuliana Ravaglia (Bologna, Italy)

* * *

ever stronger
the voice of vengeance--
falling stars
--Maria Teresa Sisti (Massa Carrara, Italy)

* * *

piercing the silence
a meteor falls
into the earth’s atmosphere
--John Paul Caponigro (Cushing, Maine)

* * *

State Fair with my girl
amid death-defying rides...
mom in hospice
--Carl Brennan (North Syracuse, New York)

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

in the sky, glowing light
far away, rising in height
fast, fading from sight
--Cheng Wei Fong (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)

The haikuist is patiently waiting to see a comet tail tonight. The Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) announced that the icy dirtball, Comet Tsuchinshan, will put on a show after sunset.

In this column, star-gazing haikuists share their out-of-this-world celestial experiences watching comets, meteor showers, UFOs, constellations, supermoons, blue moons and the northern lights. Improved camera technology and forecasting tools has increased the number of photo-haikuists who peruse the skies each night. Luciana Moretto often enjoyed star-gazing during this spectacular year of the dragon in Treviso, Italy. Shishkova was enthralled by meteors. Aaron Ozment couldn’t see them, but seemed to know that tears were falling in Kagoshima.

Dragon’s head
lost in the stars
tail of a comet

* * *

late at night
ecstatic woman’s voice
Perseids

* * *

From pampas grass homes
Crying to the moon unseen
Crickets in the mist

Natalia Kuznetsova recalled sitting beside her story-telling father under dreamy night skies overhead Moscow, Russia. Nazarena Rampini recalled her dad’s heartwarming response to seeing a comet flash by Pogliano Milanese, Italy.

dad’s UFOs tales
and my flights of fantasy...
comet’s tail

* * *

Halley’s comet
the rare hug
of my father

Sheila Barksdale said she held her breath “at the tail-end of summer here in England,” when night-time fishermen from Cornwall, England, “extinguished their boat lights and threw a ring net onto the ocean’s surface and a shoal of sardines--so plentiful that the chute swinging around depositing them in buckets on deck was a shimmering sight to see.”

haul of pilchards
streaming crazy down the chute:
comet’s tail

Donna Fleischer visited a farm in Bloomfield, Connecticut, where birds have been known to occasionally escape and show-off their colorful tail feathers to the neighbors. Ivan Georgiev chased after a dog down the street in Gottingen, Germany.

the comet’s tail
in a peacock’s dream,
end of August

* * *

dog days
in line for ice cream
a runaway pet

James Penha watched over children watching over farms in Bali, Indonesia.

Bali kids make noise
and a little pay scaring
birds from rice fields

Eugeniusz Zacharski visited a dairy farm in Darlowo, Poland. Teiichi Suzuki nervously stirred his morning coffee in Osaka.

bright summer night
drinking milk straight
from the cow’s teats

* * *

Flow of milk
in the black coffee--
typhoon comes

David Cox danced indoors to the tune of Typhoon Yagi in Hanoi, Vietnam.

corrugated iron
the rap and ripping…
typhoon’s last song

Angela Giordano attended a wedding in Avigliano, Italy.

in the darkness--
the comet’s tail
bridal train

Aljosa Vukovic enjoyed a showtime at dinner in Sibenik, Croatia. Ken Sawitri enjoyed last night’s show in Blora, Indonesia. Zelyko Funda stayed in bed in Varazdin, Croatia.

comet tails--
the shrimps tossed
on my plate

* * *

comet tails
an orchestra ended with the
delayed audience clapping

* * *

sleepless night
in the ceiling window
a comet trail show

Tuyet Van Do enjoyed a wide-angle view from Melbourne, Australia.

great expanse
through the Outback
a comet’s tail

Ashoka Weerakkody was a fan of the de Havilland Comet 4 jetliner. Looking skyward from Colombo, Sri Lanka, the haikuist was delighted by the “jet trails of the Comet that crisscrossed the Indian subcontinent linking England and Australia” until 1981.

crisscrossing
my childhood skies
that Comet’s t(r)ails

Tomislav Maretic recalled jogging down the street in 1997 when a bright comet with a shining tail caught his eye. Henryk Czempiel likes the comet knot and comet bun hairstyles that are trendy this year in Strzelce Opolskie, Poland.

Comet Hale-Bopp--
will any of my descendants
see it again?

* * *

watching a comet
her blond ponytail
on my shoulder

Tony Williams worried that children would be looking up when they should have been looking out for potholes in Glasgow, Scotland. Jean-Hughes Chevy won’t lose his pet French poodle.

long, hot summer
kids falling through cracks
in the pavement

* * *

summer in Paris
a hydrant keeps the dog
on a leash

Florian Munteanu aimed his telescope at one of the brightest objects in the sky tonight.

step by step
a cosmic waltz night--
sights on Mars

Emil Karla’s family stayed up late watching the skies over Paris, France.

Fallen from the bed...
A new constellation
on my son’s back

Elizabeth Fanto didn’t use a flashlight in Baltimore, Maryland. Glowworms rely on their own light source to attract mates. But street lights and light pollution caused by non-natural white light makes the green glow from the creatures weaker and less visible.

harvest moon
dims the flash of a last
glowworm

Gazing at yesterday’s spinning baseball moon, Kanematsu relived the speeding pitches, fly balls and stolen bases that excited thousands of cheering high school fans at Koshien Stadium this season.

No more cheers
rise from the ballpark
cooler moon

Rising at five in the morning, Murasaki Sagano closely followed Shohei Ohtani’s back number 17. She dropped everything when the Dodgers player became Major League Baseball’s first player with 50 homers and 50 stolen bases in a season. The haikuist hopes to compose another earth-shattering haiku during the designated batter’s debut in the playoff season.

September breakfast
his 50/50
spilled my miso soup

Rob Goss is “starting to feel the first anticipatory twangs of empty nest syndrome.” The Tokyo-based travel writer’s son plans to study overseas, so “little things… stir memories of early parenthood. That includes the moon ducking in and out of the cover of passing clouds, like the games of peekaboo we used to play.”

billowing clouds
the moon
playing peekaboo

Cox positioned himself behind a stone lantern at moonrise.

memorial stone--
tonight’s space carved out
for the moon

Foteini Georgakopoulou turned off her satellite television and went outside to play hide-and-seek in Athens, Greece.

in the summer sky
peeking from behind a dish
the moon

In Tokyo, Junko Saeki suggested a way for mothers to remember how happy they were with children running about and to keep them going after the house empties. Stephen J. DeGuire described a ghost town.

scarecrows, scarecrows in
my children’s clothes--
empty nest

* * *

greying town--
scarecrows outnumber
real people

Refika Dedic contemplated a starry-eyed path in Bihac, Bosnia and Herzegovina. A way through the forest awaits Pamela A. Babusci in Rochester, New York.

next to the scarecrow
quixotic
goes its own way

* * *

harvest moon
illuminating the path
that nobody takes

Thankful for his late-night dinner in Los Angeles, Stephen J. DeGuire reminded us that farmers sometimes have to work all night long.

harvest time
the weight of moonlight
on farmers’ backs

Masumi Orihara rolled onto her side in Atsugi, Kanagawa Prefecture. Helga Stania purred in Ettiswil, Switzerland.

lingering heat
bedroom window wide open
buckmoon viewing

* * *

harvest moon
the old cat
opens her eyes

Urszula Marciniak nonchalantly described the heat in Lodz, Poland. The heat roused Georgakopoulou from a fitful sleep.

such a hot day
his nurse undoes one button
of her uniform

* * *

I woke up from the heat
to find that the moon had made its way
in front of my bed

Murasaki Sagano consented to an overpowering moon in Tokyo.

Willing or not
owing to this full moon
I’m Juliet

Stania, opened a door to her liberation. Suzuki opened an old door.

shooting stars
I wish
to remain wishless

* * *

Mackerel sky
to stumble on an unknown world
used book shop

Zontini in Italy, Lilia Racheva in Bulgaria and Isabella Kramer in Germany, respectively, were mesmerized by the same moon.

the blue moon
lights up the stubble:
gold in the fields

* * *

white moon
crickets chirping
mantras

* * *

rose moon
drunken by scent
the cockchafer

Anne-Marie McHarg sketched black on black in London, England.

Moonlit night
A bat embraces
Its shadow

David Brydges, the poet emissary of The Ontario Poetry Society, confirmed “poetry is everywhere” even “while putting out the garbage” in front of his home in Cobalt, Ontario.

moody moon
hazy evening
after the rain

Sherry Reniker enjoyed the conversations of birds in East Hill Kent, Washington.

kittiwakes
off the cliffs
harvest moon

Leon Tefft gave the shirt off his back in Greenville, South Carolina. Anne Marie McHarg spruced up a gentleman farmer in London, England. Nani Mariani gave away the shirt off her back in Melbourne, Australia. Marilyn Monroe’s legendary skirt flew in a subway breeze, but Babusci witnessed what windspeeds of 70 kph can do.

still feeling good vibes
the beggar’s
aloha shirt

* * *

A child’s posy
In the buttonhole
Of a scarecrow

* * *

scarecrow
waving my old red t-shirt
scares the birds

* * *

autumn storm
the scarecrow
naked

Urszula Marciniak yelped in Lodz, Poland.

night walk
I keep forgetting there’s
a scarecrow there

John Hawkhead muttered about the madness of believing in imaginary enemies as he made his way around a cemetery in Bradford on Avon, U.K.

tilting windmills
following a circular path
through war graves

These two haiku about the war in Ukraine were penned by Myron Lysenko from Woodend, Australia.

open field
the invading soldier
becomes a scarecrow

* * *

sunflower stalks…
a farmer in his tractor
tows away a tank

R. Suresh Babu gave ministrations as flames swept cornstalks and burned a strawman at the stake in Thiruvalla, India. Kanchan Chatterjee returned home with a co-worker in Jamshedpur, India.

stubble burning
the last rites
of a scarecrow

* * *

end of the harvest…
the farmer takes his scarecrow
back home

Arvinder Kaur has no friends in Chandigarh, India.

back from war
my only friend, the fragrance
of night jasmine

Rosemarie Schuldes composed this haiku with a silver lining in Mattsee, Austria.

harvest moon
even the rubble
silvery

Mike Fainzilber sold memories once thought to be worth their weight in silver in Rehovot, Israel.

wartime economy
trying to pawn
grandpa’s old medals

In St. Louis Park, Minnesota, Archie G. Carlos glared at an image of war.

missiles again
a war orphan stares
at the comet’s tail

Chen-ou Liu looked up hopefully from Ajax, Ontario.

harvest moon
behind the barbed wire fence
a migrant’s dream

During what must have seemed like just a moment of a lifetime, Ravaglia was distracted by the thought of a speeding bullet in the autumn wind.

sudden flash--
his twenties
disperse in the wind

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

The next issues of the Asahi Haikuist Network appear on Nov. 1, 15, and 29. Readers are invited to send haiku about toys, games, or numbers 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 [email protected].

* * *

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).