beach combing for summer haiku: David McMurray/ Asahi Haikuist Network

 

ASAHI HAIKUIST NETWORK/ David McMurray

July 31, 2026 at 08:00 JST

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(Illustration by Mitsuaki Kojima)

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beach retirement chasing sand dollars
--Roberta Beach Jacobson (Indianola, Iowa)

* * *

in cracked desert soil
ghaf roots run deeper, searching
a promise of rain
--Natalia Danjon (Dubai, United Arab Emirates)

* * *

tortoises flee
the south of France--
fire alarm
--Francoise Maurice (Draguignan, France)

* * *

beautiful
with all its spots…
a ladybug
--Seyed Edris Hosseini (Shiraz, Iran)

* * *

am I crazy
or is the world suspicious
razor clam
--Jerome Berglund (New Orleans, Louisiana)

* * *

children confused--
after arguing the two clowns
blow kisses to one another
--Vasile Moldovan (Bucharest, Romania)

* * *

summer party
waving wingless arms
on the roof
--Urszula Marciniak (Lodz, Poland)

* * *

cumulus cloud--
a whimsical wind aids
a rabbit’s leap
--Paul Callus (Safi, Malta)

* * *

leaping for the moon
swimmer’s waves
shock the sea
--Preeti Sharma (Delhi, India)

* * *

small riverside pool
crab, fish and water striders
biodiversity
--Doc Sunday (Hiroshima)

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

my fishing rod pen
floats on the surface--
no words bite today…
--Alan Maley (Canterbury, England)

The haikuist fished for haiku all day long. Mike Fainzilber caught a quiet moment in Tel Aviv, Israel. An American soccer fan, Ian Willey fished a warning from the Dotonbori Canal that had been issued in Osaka for its “record temperatures, raging fires, and rising sea levels.”

last boat out
the sounds
of silence

* * *

city river
floating with the current
a yellow card

Gordana Kurtovic was disappointed by an old friend in Osijek, Croatia. Tsanka Shishkova bathed in a scented pond in Sofia, Bulgaria. A peppery aroma twisted Pippa Phillips’ nose in Greensboro, North Carolina.

old face on a pond
reflects a long-time friendship--
yet an illusion

* * *

soft, airy scent
in the mid-morning
water lilies bloom

* * *

nasturtiums:
even if the victory
is Pyrrhic

In today’s column, haikuists explore unfamiliar and unknown waters. Noting that “nature never waits,” Junko Saeki advises those who worry about traveling away from Tokyo, to “relax, relax.”

off on an uncharted voyage,
your luck will hold, yet
tighten your guard

Waves keep approaching, noted Willey in Takamatsu, Kagawa Prefecture, so “it’s no use worrying about waves that’ve already collapsed.” He lets worries roll off like water on a duck’s back, admitting “age must be a factor,” but he’s always forgetting things.

wave after wave
how good I’ve become
at forgetting

Real writing stems from experience, especially lived experience. Returning home to Athens, Greece, after a trip to Japan, Foteini Georgakopoulou penned this vignette.

Fast-food elegy
An old woman smiling
At the screen, brides

Murasaki Sagano contemplated taking a trip to an unknown place over the horizon from Tokyo. Julie Ann Lebitania discovered that her eyes can see more vibrant colors than a camera lens in Sorsogon, Philippines.

Rainbow
the other end linked
to an unknown place

* * *

rainbow cloud
few screen taps capture
a white cloud

Kavita Ratna combined all the colors of a rainbow to shine a white light in Bangalore, India.

ultimate vibgyor
shimmering
white peacock

Eugeniusz Zacharski shared a haiku inspired by the novel “Ulysses” by James Joyce about real-life events taking place in Dublin, Ireland, on June 16, 1904.

Bloomsday competition--
the haiku
drowns

Originally constructed in 1594, the bridge mentioned in Sagano’s haiku spans the Sumida River. Nearby there is a statue of Matsuo Basho attired in travel clothes holding writing utensils (yatate) looking toward the narrow road to the deep north that he walked along in 1689.

ball-point pen
instead of ink and brush--
Senju Ohashi

Following a lived-experience, poets can write on scratchpads or iPads about that moment and experiment with the haiku form, its three lines, season words, syllables and poetics. Patrick Sweeney penned this all-in-one-breath poem in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

since Mack quit smoking
he swings and catches his keys
in the same nicotine-stained hand

Read aloud on one flowing line, rather than three, bird-watcher Yutaka Kitajima’s 17-syllable haiku sounds pleasantly rhythmical. Note its three consecutive rhyming /ul/ sounds (bulbul full); the three successive words with identical /e/ vowels (nectar, cherry, fresh); an elliptic pause (…); and alliteration (fresh foliage).

A brown-eared bulbul full of nectar ... cherry tree’s fresh foliage

Urszula Marciniak described a tiny, winged magical flower spirit in Lodz, Poland. In traditional folklore, faeries were believed to be fallen angels, demi-gods, or the ghostly spirits of humans. Mauro Battini was startled by a shattering mirror in Santa Croce, Italy.

a sprouting pea
on the windowsill
a fairy tale

* * *

frog on a water lily...
Frankenstein’s voice
breaks the moon

Doc Sunday visited Haji Dam that created the cherry-blossom-lined Lake Yachiyo in Hiroshima Prefecture. Peggy Pilkey paddled while “canoeing, for the last time, at a favorite lakeside lodge in Nova Scotia.”

No more war…
cherry blossom petal
boats in the river

* * *

J-stroking, we smile in passing--
her hijab snug
my sun hat floppy

Holidaying at Lake Stropu in Daugavpils, Latvia, David Cox watched tiny female flowers cluster into tall yellow spikes that will soon turn brown. This fall, those brown heads will pop open, releasing fluffy seeds.

dirty blonde
the cattails love
a side parting

Melissa Dennison soothed her hay fever with a cuppa in Bradford, England. Beata Czeszejko soothed her nerves in Warsaw, Poland.

pollen from the catkin golden whirls of tea

* * *

office lunch
green tea cools in
thickening silence

Promising a golden harvest, Masumi Orihara noticed tiny greenish-white flower spikelets on rice stalks in Atsugi, Kanagawa Prefecture. Nectar from flowers is scarce amid the heat wave in Ochten, the Netherlands, but S.T. Hills saw bees drink watery sap and scrape resin from willows, birches, and maples to seal cracks in their hives.

hidden rice flowers
open for pollination
promising morning

* * *

fermented tree sap
uncontrollable vision
a stray honeybee

Sherry Reniker propped up tiny yellow flowers in Kent, Washington. This summer is going by quickly for Zoltan Pachnik in Kaposvar, Hungary.

staking
the tomatoes
kids at play

* * *

slicing through
this summer--
a ripe red tomato

Deep in thought, Laila Brahmbhatt nurtured a stress-free afternoon. Barbara Anna Gaiardoni rested peacefully in Verona, Italy.

French lilac blooms
I caress my white hair
under the summer sky

* * *

in the hammock
Neapolitan lucky horn
strictly red

Dennison felt fire. Sagano blushed.

sunset
over the empty diner
scent of rain

* * *

Sudden kiss
from a mystic woman
summer night drama

Christina Chin was careful not to scald herself in Kuching, Sarawak.

noodle stall
the hot sweet and sour
aroma of soup

Joshua St. Claire felt white-hot in York County, Pennsylvania.

sickbed
by 3:00AM
I turn incandescent

Mario Massimo Zontini imagined God’s hand reaching out to Parma, Italy.

after the rain
white brush strokes in the sky:
veiled clouds

Delighted by a sudden rainfall in drought-stricken Raleigh, North Carolina, Charlie Smith slid his hand down the smooth, slippery bark of a crape myrtle tree (sarusuberi).

summer storm…
monkey slide trees
rings of pink

Brahmbhatt ink-brushed curly seaweed, wavy ribbon algae, and branching corals in sharp, round, even, and strong, yet delicate sweeping lines.

sumi-e strokes
tracing the shape
of algae

Helga Stania lamented the loss of colors in a bone-white sea. Sanjana Zorinc hid under the shade in Bjelovar, Croatia.

red necklace...
once so colorful
coral reef

* * *

colourful umbrellas
above the promenade--
their shadows the same

By placing a single letter in brackets, T.D. Ginting conjured the summer duo of gelato and tanning lotion in Medan, Indonesia.

the porch, the sun...
dreaming
(n)ice cream

Wearing sunglasses under a parasol at Ostend resort in Belgium, Marie Derley focused on this summer’s bestsellers.

reading on the beach
the bloody scary cover
of the chubby girl

Dorota Czerwinska matter-of-factly described outdoor toys in Warsaw, Poland.

sandbox
between two tanks
a plastic soldier

Amir Kapetanovic harvested raw salt near Ston, Croatia.

a July shiver--
shining along the seashore
hills of salt

A.J. Johnson might have been imagining Utah’s Great Salt Lake, when a small grass shrimp moved in the salt marshes near Stephens City, Virginia. Kurtovic shared a memory.

no water added
a salt flats mirage
of brine shrimp

* * *

in my heart
the cry of the seagulls--
farewell to the sea

Catching freshwater memories, Richard Bailly reeled in top-water bait on a glassy lake in Fargo, North Dakota. Chris Meadows could hear root tubers stirring in the earth in Bethany Beach, Delaware. Mauro Battini heard whistling and a high-pitched hiss coming from a pot in Santa Croce, Italy.

rock bass
under the dock
out of tuna

* * *

waiting
underground
elephant ears

* * *

at the fishmonger’s
the lobsters ask for help--
i hear voices

Joanna Ashwell plucked up her courage in Durham, England. “I don’t know about guys, but when I was growing up in Bolingbrook, Illinois,” girls pulled petals off flowers, recounted Wilda Morris. In Austin, Texas, Jeffrey L. Taylor interpreted Detective Joe Friday’s euphemism from the 1950s television series “Dragnet.”

summer breeze
a daisy petal
from you

* * *

he loves me
he loves me not--
the daisy petals lie

* * *

“Just the facts, ma’am”
polite way to say, in this heat,
Don’t you lie to me

Jacobson threw nickel silver for a lucky beachcomber to find.

my key tossed
toward the river…
mudlarkers

Slobodan Pupovac waded and Pachnik floated, respectively, in the Adriatic Sea.

I go in
up to my knees--
the blue sea

* * *

siesta
a seagull at the mercy
of ripples

Philip Davison lay on his back for a while in Dublin, Ireland.

afloat down river
to the waterfall
where a body takes flight

John Hawkhead said goodbye in Bradford on Avon, U.K.

end of times...
we dream of the moon
breaking up

Dina Towbin grieved in Brooklyn, New York.

eyes closed her lips licked
floating an opioid sea
to the great beyond

Originally published in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on Cendrine Marrouat’s blog, this haiku encapsulates the idea of a wordless poem.

Waterfall--
Unnecessary
the words

Tony Williams punctuated this poem in Glasgow, Scotland.

adding a dash
of blue to the pond--
damselfly

Raj K. Bose’s neighbor lost everything to a storm in Honolulu, Hawaii. Minko Tanev reached for hope in Sofia, Bulgaria.

the floating debris
bulging eyes of golden koi…
the river took all

* * *

reflections--
in the summer river
a church with a cross

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

Reflect on haiku at http://www.asahi.com/ajw/special/haiku/. The next issues of the Asahi Haikuist Network will appear Aug. 7 and 21. Readers are invited to compose haiku related to water spirits or fairies. Please mail your haiku 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

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).

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