Mitsuaki Kojima

The first haiku by schoolteacher Annie Gustin marks the exact minutes atomic bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively, on Aug. 6 and 9. Faxing her poem from Woodbridge, Connecticut, she notes that if you read closely, you will see that it fitsa 3-5-3 syllable count.
The original second line of the next poem by Toshiko Mihara of Hagi, Yamaguchi Prefecture, referred to a yellow watermelon. The moon as metaphor for watermelon is common enough, but if read as an adjective, becoming means attractive. Writing from Aomori, Tatsuko Tashima was caught in the dark when all the lights went out on a moonless night.

Yellow moon
becoming watermelon
on hot night

Twilight
summer turns pitch black
in a blink

Celebrated July 7 in many areas of the nation, the tanabata festival is enjoyed one month later in Kagoshima.A university student there, Masatoshi Hashiguchi, penned the following prayer to heaven on an oblong card and hung it on a bamboo branch decorated with colorful ribbons.
The festival is based on a Chinese folk legend about the Weaver Star (Vega) and the Cowherd Star (Altair), lovers destined to meet only once a year while traveling across the Milky Way.

Wish penned on
an oblong card brightens
in starlight

Mayumi Suzumechi got together with some friends from her school days to compose the following poems that describe what was done and why.

Star festival
writing haiku together
high school reunion

Paper strips
pray to see you again
bamboo spray

Miho Tanaka wrote the next wish in the form of a haiku with 11 syllables that reveals her simple happiness to be alive. Shaping his poem around 17 syllables, Charlie Smith contrasts his ordinary garden in North Carolina with the magnificent heavens above it.

Silent night
stars and summer moon
existence

My empty garden
lightning bugs returning home
river full of stars

Want to try composing haiku ?

Back numbers

Readers are invited to send haiku with summer themes to David McMurray at the Asahi Haikuist Network, International Herald Tribune / Asahi Shimbun, 5-3-2 Tsukiji, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 104-8011 and by fax to 03-5541-8539.