middle age May Day
I paint my backyard fence
Red
In 1985 I bought a rundown starter house in Toronto's east end. Most of my politikal friends thought this was a sell out as I'd been living in cooperative housing for many years. I really did paint the fence on May Day and realized the humorous irony that I was fixing up my property rather than marching in a May Day parade as I'd always done before.
ASAHI HAIKUIST NETWORK/ David McMurray
May 1, 2026 at 08:00 JST
summer wind the chicken butcher’s smile
--Nicholas Klacsanzky (Seattle, Washington)
* * *
oceans dying
M(ay)day
counting whale teeth
--Robin Rich (Brighton, England)
* * *
before transition
the last piece of clothes
on a sea cliff
--Zoltan Pachnik (Kaposvar, Hungary)
* * *
motherland
not for armored cars
nor for drones
--Murasaki Sagano (Tokyo)
* * *
a broken vase
somewhere among flowers
her soul
--Philmore Place (Minsk, Belarus)
* * *
Blue eyes brim, cast down
“Never does anything right!”
Child’s heartbeat echoes
--Shiona Mackenzie (Hamilton, Ontario)
* * *
narcissus blossom
mother’s tender loving care
sweet memories
--Micheline Comtois-Cecyre (Boucherville, Quebec)
* * *
late but home at last
firm mattress with deep dimples
now this soft landing
--Philip Davison (Dublin, Ireland)
* * *
farmers’ protest
a four-leaf clover tattoo
on his forearm
--R. Suresh Babu (Chikmagalur, India)
* * *
Grannies and grandpas
pennies and dimes taxation
pays for our healthcare
--Junko Saeki (Tokyo)
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FROM THE NOTEBOOK
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30th generation
chernobyl dogs--
wild mutants
--Minko Tanev (Sofia, Bulgaria)
Walking in a May Day parade, the haikuist described the evolution of feral pets since a nuclear meltdown in the spring of 1986. Writing from Conoplja, Serbia, Zoran Doderovic marked the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. Yutaka Kitajima was literally “frightened by the news of the reopening of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata.”
Radioactive rain
still falling
on the old photo
* * *
Rough waters...
boiling-water reactors
looming large
Wild hens flew down from their tree roosts to peck for breakfast and cockscombs crowed so loud that Raj K Bose squirmed out of his warm bed. Stepping onto a cold serrated edge, Peggy Pilkey screamed and jumped back into bed in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
rainy summer dawn
worming out of bed…
feral chickens cluck
* * *
my husband’s comb underfoot--
the art of acceptance
enduring love
Padraig O’Morain noted that in Dublin, Ireland, “protests here are rainy occasions.”
scattering protestors
rainburst
silver coins dancing on the street
Mariola Grabowska penned a first line “close to the hearts of people of my generation in Poland, where the last half-century has been very turbulent.”
May Day march
a white and red balloon
slips from my hand
Wiktor Szafirski hummed in Podkarpacie, Poland.
worker’s song--
a cluster of bees
in the hive
Descending the steps from St. Leonard’s Church in Bridgnorth, Shropshire, Timothy Daly snapped at his partner “for talking too loud while I played piano in the church.” Masumi Orihara was soothed by the dramatic sounds of Claude Debussy’s 1905 piece, “Moonlight.”
soaring gulls...
the ease with which
I lose my cool
* * *
the pianist’s slender fingers
weaving moonlight--
into a rippling lake
Monica Kakkar watched her step in South Riding, Virginia.
finders keepers…
sidestep on the sidewalk
wisteria seeds
Tsanka Shishkova stooped under hanging blossoms in Sofia, Bulgaria.
pastel colors in fragrant cascades wisteria
Huge carp-shaped wind streamers (koinobori) have been strung on lines over rivers and hung on poles outside Sagano’s home in readiness for Children’s Day on May 5.
windless day
baby frets with
koinobori
John Richard Stephens celebrated with helium-filled balloons in Maui, Hawaii.
floating kites
restrained by their tethers--
a balloon floats by
* * *
daughter’s birthday--
candle flames
flip and twirl
Cornelia Rossberg began a melody in Coburg, Germany.
on the first of may we went
hanging in long rows we sang
how young we were
A.J. Johnson recalled the heated arguments and cool coal seams that ran through Logan County, West Virginia back in 1921.
mine runoff
the ballad of
Blair Mountain
* * *
dark mine shaft
the old union hall
sits empty
Gordana Vlasic delayed pulling on her kite string, as it soared over Oroslavje, Croatia.
towards the clouds--
the paper kite hasn’t felt
the rope yet
Guliz Mutlu whistled on a blade of grass in Ankara, Turkey.
green pulse
kite sway
grass singer
Tomislav Maretic laughed aloud with children in Zagreb, Croatia, who easily embrace new things from abroad.
children
“what are the rules”
playing baseball in the yard
Danijela Grbelja swept off homeplate in Sibenik, Croatia.
baseball--
dust between
a bird and the ball
In Los Angeles, California, Stephen J. DeGuire shouted “home run!”
spring training
winter gets knocked out
of the park
John Richard Stephens described what happened to a fast pitch at Les Murakami Stadium, Maui, Hawaii, during the season-opening series. Murasaki Sagano was startled in Tokyo.
Rainbow Warriors
the ball sails into the sky--
the stadium roars
* * *
screams and thuds
from the kendo gym
spring birds fly
Mike Fainzilber cheered silently in Tel Aviv, Israel.
national team
not singing
the national anthem
A poet laureate in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Mary Oishi is also fan of a baseball team in Oakland.
hospice talk…
that year he caught all those balls
at the A’s games
Joseph Elliott looks forward to watching the grass regrow on the little league baseball field in Kingston, Ontario.
the day ending
workers trample
squares of dead sod
Doderovic observed students protest at a railway station in Novi Sad, Serbia, where 16 people died when a concrete canopy collapsed.
baseball bats
in the hands of a phalanx--
civil liberties
Carl Brennan stayed home to read the newspaper today in North Syracuse, New York.
The news reports
screaming protest marches--
The Rite of Spring
Erin Castaldi got down on all fours to clean up the kitchen in Mays Landing, New Jersey.
no more cream
in the eclair
toddler prints
in cinnamon sugar
Yutaka Kitajima spit out fruit pips in Joetsu, Niigata Prefecture.
Ponkan pack
picked up on impulse…
citrus scent
Bose was aghast at the sight of government officials posting traffic-flow banners along the busy bridges he crossed in Nakameguro, Tokyo.
Black screens hide
sakura blooms in silence,
crowds push through
“It was a big job,” taking down the winter storm windows in Wenham, Massachusetts, but Barrie Levine “loved getting fresh air in the house again.”
family cottage
hanging up the window screens
from grandma’s time
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The next issues of the Asahi Haikuist Network appear May 15 and 29. Readers are invited to compose haiku related to a convenience store or a fast-food outlet. Send haiku on a postcard to David McMurray at the International University of Kagoshima, Sakanoue 8-34-1, Kagoshima, 891-0197, Japan, or 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).
