Tasting--the long finish of an alpine cheese
--Helga Stania (Ettiswil, Switzerland)

* * *

three glasses down
the lingering smell
of his apology
-- Chen-ou Liu (Ajax, Ontario)

* * *

goat’s cheese
white wine reveals
its blackcurrant
--Jean-Hughes Chevy (Paris, France)

* * *

the last blackberry,
tart on the tongue, hard seeds
stuck between my teeth...
--Alan Maley (Canterbury, England)

* * *

from a distance
fruit of kousa dogwood--
nomadic raspberries?
--M.E. Peggy Pilkey (Dartmouth, Nova Scotia)

* * *

cold wine at sunset
somnolent bees
on drooping flowers
--Cathryn Stone (Tasmania, Australia)

* * *

waterfall…
wine and slithering oyster
down the throat
--Masumi Orihara (Atsugi, Kanagawa Prefecture)

* * *

drunk with light--
scratching the silence
at dusk
--Giuliana Ravaglia (Bologna, Italy)

* * *

My cat’s suave profile
outfacing harsh sunset--
his big plans
--Carl Brennan (North Syracuse, New York)

* * *

comet tail
heading to a fuel station
our wine bubbles afloat
--Justice Joseph Prah (Accra, Ghana)

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

Ebute Ero market
a basket of fresh tomatoes
so light
--Uchechukwu Onyedikam (Lagos, Nigeria)

Entering one of the oldest and largest markets in his country on the first day of the dry season, the haikuist observed how farmers dealt with conflict. C.X. Turner returned heavy-heartedly after a morning of outdoor market shopping at the Bullring in Birmingham, England.

market day--
a handful of grapes
weighs heavy

Jacoby Crane sipped precious water in Chesterfield, England. Following a landslide victory for the People’s Power coalition in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Ashoka Weerakkody spotted a shining gold tooth. Trying to console his stateside family following the recent elections, Ian Willey in Takamatsu, Kagawa Prefecture, wrote “things may get rough for a while but change is always around the corner, or the other side of the earth.”

Hungry children cry,
barren cupboards gather dust,
water-filled bellies

* * *

price hikes
friendly grocer’s smiles
dearer too

* * *

heads up, Mom--
a new moon
is on the way

In today’s column, haikuists try to spread a little holiday cheer. All the while haggling over the rising prices of bread, wine and even water. Feeling frustrated in Ajax, Ontario, Liu’s scribbling didn’t seem worth the paper it was written on, but then he sharpened his pencil to compose this haiku.

the crumpled ball
of a must-buy grocery list...
autumn deepens

Thinking of those who struggle to find enough bread to eat, Slobodan Pupovac prayed to the patron saint of the poor. According to Catholic church records, the martyr mocked his Roman persecutors who were burning him over an open flame by saying, “Turn me over. I’m done on this side.”

tears of St. Lawrence
a multitude of desires
crisscross the sky

Keith Evetts took his place at the end of a long queue at a village bakery in Thames Ditton, England. Michael Feil was enticed by a woman’s gaze in Berwyn, Pennsylvania.

student actress
at the bakery till
men buying bread

* * *

her dragonfly eyes
cut through the bar’s patrons
calling me home

Nicoletta Ignatti gasped--then her family glared--in Castellana Grotte, Italy.

dragonfly eyes--
dad’s sneeze
on the set table

Mike Fainzilber set a romantic table in Rehovot, Israel, but later learned that it wasn’t really his dinner date’s preferred “cup of tea.”

candlelight and wine
her heartfelt desire
a nice cup of tea

Jackie Chou chatted amicably about felines in Pico Rivera, California. Draining the last drop from a bottle of red wine into an empty milk glass on his kitchen table, Brennan was startled by his cat.

roundtable gossip
the crisp meows of a kitten
filling the gaps

* * *

Iberian lynx springs
out of thin air my last
glass of garnacha

Tempted to fly through the entranceway of Neverland, where no one ages, Mauro Battini realized she wouldn’t know how to stop.

ripe grapes--
the star did not stop
on Peter Pan island

Rita Rosen updated this one-line haiku that she composed at the German Embassy in Tokyo and submitted for publishing 25 years ago in a Saturday edition of The Asahi Evening News: first boat trip on troubled water--a star on the mast

empty wine cask
covered with faded leaves
a star atop

Pouring red wine as a libation in his hometown of Sofia, Bulgaria, Minko Tanev proposed this toast to the people who first made wine 7,000 years ago from grapes they cultivated in the area. The wine cultists worshiped Dionysus--the god of fertility, grapes and wine, merriment and theater. Their ritual madness was sanctified by copious amounts of bread, water and wine.

the ancient Thracians
with divine drink--
wine ritual

Writing cheerfully from Seattle, Washington, petro c.k.’s noted seasonal changes in the choice of tipple: “summer gins and pilsners are making way for the fall and winter whiskeys and stouts.”

brief reflection
grandma polishes
her hip flask

Autumn flashed by so fast in Moscow, Russia, that Natalia Kuznetsova fell behind her chores and had to reach out for a drink to steady her nerves.

storing for winter
a pile of summer clothes
two shots of vodka

While selecting haiku for contests or his autumn-themed haiku column in the newspaper, the master haikuist Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) periodically reached out for a persimmon or two. The beat poet Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) who penned haiku spontaneously, referred to the poetry as pops. Satoru Kanematsu in Nagoya enjoyed juxtaposing these two sensations in this haiku.

Persimmons--
Shiki’s haiku pops
on my lips

Pippa Philipps longed for candy and a friend: tootsie pop wishing I could taste you

Stoianka Boianova noted foxes have a sweet tooth for succulent fruit in Sofia, Bulgaria. In addition to grapes, foxes have been seen eating blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, cherries, persimmons, mulberries, apples and plums.

harvest moon
a fox in the vineyard
eating grapes

Joshua St. Claire winked at his partner in crime and jumped a split-rail fence in York County, Pennsylvania.

abandoned orchard
no one to tell us
no

Teiichi Suzuki’s mouth watered as he walked to the south of Osaka through orchards of grapes, persimmons and pears--but caught his breath when he saw a burning effigy in a rice field.

The shape of the cross
gradually emerges
scarecrow in the fire

Sure, you know that tomatoes are fruits that are typically used as vegetables in savory recipes. But, you have to listen to the lyricist Ira Gershwin’s song “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” in the 1937 film “Shall We Dance,” to really know how to pronounce it today, according to this haiku by Mark Gilbert.

you say tomato
I say no longer
affordable

Urszula Marciniak in Lodz, Poland; Rosa Maria Di Salvatore in Catania, Italy; and Kuznetsova in Moscow, Russia, respectively measure up the effects of inflation on their loved ones.

plump tomatoes
grandma adjusts her glasses
at the price

* * *

rising prices…
my husband will finally
lose weight

* * *

low-fat diets
against soaring inflation...
the silver lining

After opening up the boxed apple pie she bought in Tokyo, Junko Saeki started to question government statistics showing low inflation, by asking: “What’s the truth?”

the same box,
the same price, but,
half the pie

James Penha clucked in Bali, Indonesia.

chicken lays an egg
out of my reach--a great rise
Humpty Dumpty had

Ecaterina Neagoe felt serenaded in the heady scent of fruit in Bucharest, Romania.

concert of crickets--
the moon in the ripe grapes
spreading their fragrance

Thinking they were imbibing alone, Pupovac and Stania, respectively, soon had partners.

the moon and I
drinking the last bottle
of last year’s wine

* * *

winetasting
the robot dog
does a handstand

Wine might be cheaper than water, suggests Kanematsu. The price of tap water rose across Japan this year by up to 37 percent, and it will soon rise again due to the shrinking population and renewal costs for aging government utilities. The national average for 20 cubic meters of water per month, the amount used by a small household, reached a staggering 3,343 yen ($23.72).

New coolness--
the sound of water
kitchen tap

Emil Karla haggled over the price of fish at an auction in Paris, France. Robert Kania squawked at rising prices in Warsaw, Poland. John S. Gilbertson suggested guests bring their own bottle and a rose at dinnertime in Greenville, South Carolina.

weekly winter walk
to the fish market
the cry of birds between quotes

* * *

the market--
crying birds
over the fish

* * *

bring a flower
share some wine
as sun grows tired

Stania continues to shine.

mild autumn sun
I’m at peace
with growing old

Robin Rich flipped over the Donna Summers’ “Bad Girls” album at home in Brighton, England, and sang this line really loud: whoa-oh-oh-oh.

that song
on the radio again
90’s revival

In Nottingham, England, Gilbert quoted a line while watching a rerun of the BBC’s historic comedy television series “Blackadder.”

Baldrick’s cunning plan--
even turnips
no longer affordable

Daniela Misso said she sat under a mackerel sky alongside “a dreamy-looking scarecrow and a magpie, here in the surrounding countryside” of San Gemini, Italy.

abandoned field--
a scarecrow gazes
at the clouds

Sankara Jayanth Sudanagunta shared all he had in Hyderabad, India.

instant noodles...
neighbor at the door
wants his money back

Evetts couldn’t pick up the tab in Thames Ditton, England. Eva Limbach got left with the check in Saarbruecken, Germany.

unpaid bills
the candidate’s
election promises

* * *

summer’s end
nobody
paid the bill

Valincia Richard at Mississippi State University picked up a discounted loaf of bread that had passed its best by date. The haikuist dusty fae heard a rustling sound reminiscent of chatting and falling apart in Miami, Florida. Turner shivered whilst breaking bread.

soft bread
crumbles at the touch--
hunger fills the market

* * *

friendships--
crumbling leaves
underfoot

* * *

autumn winds--
a crust of bread
splits the table

In Ajax, Ontario, Liu recalled being measured for how tall he had grown.

ten height marks
on the pantry door frame
smell of childhood

Kuznetsova must have been listening in bed at home in in Moscow, Russia, to Pete Seeger’s classic peace song written by Ed McCurdy (1950).

this world of discord
and never-ending wars...
my strangest dream

In Strzelce Opolskie, Poland, Henryk Czempiel recited the words of his favorite poet.

morning with Basho
the shadows of the oak leaves
adorn the pages

Matsuo Basho dictated this final line in 1694 three days before his death on Nov. 28 (the 12th day of the 10th lunar month) from his deathbed in a rented room over a florist’s shop in Osaka: tabi ni yande yume wa kareno wo kake-meguru (Ill on a journey, my dreams go on wandering the withered fields). Inspired by this jisei (death poem), Yutaka Kitajima suggested that he would start thinking about cleaning up his room in Joetsu, Niigata Prefecture, and composing his own last work.

A rusty workshop
the master won’t dismantle
amid pampas grass

At the end of the month, Turner’s budget is tight.

winter chill--
the last tin placed
back on the shelf

Elisabeth Guichard faces a tough decision to make tomorrow in Lyon, France.

The 30th is back--
buy sleeping pills or
pay the bills

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

The next issues of the Asahi Haikuist Network appear on Dec. 6 and 20. Readers are invited to send haiku related to the end of the year or the end of life 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 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).