Listening to the Clouds

Submissions are open for Naturescapes. Deadline – end of March. Please check the guidelines here and send us your best work.

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Listening to the clouds

A linked verse sequence by the editors of Cafe Haiku.





mid-May
pausing Bach to listen
to the clouds   RGR

weather update
the conversations
between crows   GR


dawn break
into a concert of koels-
heat wave    VR

not just ray bans-
she plasters herself
with sunscreen   SM

white…orange…violet…
the promise of rain
unanswered   RGR

a sunflower field
at the edge of day
crack of thunder  GR

scurrying to gather
the sun- dried laundry
rain clouds   VR

first rain
a kitten shakes the gloom
from its paws   BR

thunderstorm- 
Mumbai’s freshly paved roads
drown in the floods   SM

brighter still
the rainbow colours
of doggy raincoats   BR

Notes on the linked verse –


‘Twas a summer afternoon in humid old Mumbai, who was snatched from the sea and has faced her revenge ever since. And as we of this city have done forever, we wait for the rumble of the clouds that represent the monsoon rains. On the other side, in Chennai, the birds offervperhaps the sole refuge from the heatwave that seems to be that city’s curse. And so we passed the cue in this freeform renku back and forth between the coasts: dodging the sun, waiting for rain – RGR, GR, VR, SM, RGR.

GR, perhaps fed up of the heat, delivers the magaru, when the trumpets of the rain gods sound. The metaphorical baton being passed between VR, BR, SM, BR, is now wet. The sodden clothes, the slushy streets, those weather alerts: it is only memories of the other curse that come rushing back. Like the birds of the summer, it’s only our furry friends who hold that thin, thin thread of hope to last another season.

RGR


RGR – Raamesh Gowri Raghavan

GR – Geethanjali Rajan

VR – Vidya Venkatramani

SM – Sandra Martyres

BR – Brijesh Raj

Open Submissions for Naturescapes

Cafe Haiku is back after a break.

Our first submission run of 2026 is Naturescapes to match the earlier, very successful Cityscapes.

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Submission for – Naturescapes

Deadline – submit till the end of March 2026

What to submit – we are especially looking for nature themed haiga but will also accept nature themed haiku, haibun or other haikai form.

Please note that our email address has changed –

the new address is – cafehaikusubs@gmail.com

We are trying out a new format which will be quicker for you and easier for us.

You will recieve an acceptance or rejection in around a month. Please do not query before that time.

The Naturescapes Issue will go up in April May 2026.

Please check the detailed guidelines here

Looking forward to seeing your work.

Happy writing!

Open Session – do join us

Cafe Haiku returns from its break with an open session. Continuing the Haikai Potluck series, here is one more evening chat.

Date – 18 July 2025, 8.30 pm IST

Topic – What makes or breaks a haiku

Venue – online zoom session

Zoom link –

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81179701891?pwd=uVO19Do0vyb3yw5e5qDBE1swWLMIyL.1

Open to all.

This is an informal session in which a panel of haijin chat about what makes or breaks a haiku according to each of them, with examples, of course. After the panel speaks the audience is welcome to ask questions or add their own comments.

We hope to have an open relaxed discussion, learn something new and spend an enjoyable evening with haiku.

Look forward to seeeing you there. Do join us!

Cafe Haiku is taking a break

Due to the personal schedules of the editors, Cafe Haiku is taking a summer break for a month or so. We have been at it for five years putting up about two posts a week. We finished our 500th post, a big milestone for us and only possible because of your support.
Thank you.

Don’t worry, we have plans and will be back to open a new submissions window and organise
some online sessions too.
Wish you all a happy summer,
lots of writing
and see you soon.

Cityscapes – leaving the hospital

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Haiku by Tuyet Van Do, Australia

leaving the hospital
following me home
a sickle moon

The Cityscapes series ends here.
A very big thank you to everyone who participated by sending us your excellent work,
or by reading and commenting.
Happy writing!

Cityscapes – meteor shower night

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Haiku by Rohini Gupta, India

city night
a thousand stolen stars
under a blank sky

who wins today
the last of cool
or summer heat

unseen
in city skies
meteor shower night

Cityscapes – black umbrella

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Haiku by Sandra Martyes, India

busy roads-
tailing an ambulance
to reach work

blinding headlights-
her baby coos
with shut eyes

busy street –
I’ve been pickpocketed
a beggar screams

a black umbrella
covered the manhole –
his last stop

navigating
potholes on Mumbai roads –
drivers test their skill

Cityscapes – inner courtyard

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Haibun by Geethanjali Rajan, India

Heard Melodies

Let my thoughts come to you, when I am gone, like the afterglow of sunset at the margin of starry silence.
― Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds

At Jorasanko, we enter Thakur Bari, the ancestral home of Shri Rabindranath Tagore. The lawn has just a dash of the warm February sun and a few young girls and boys sit around. The building with its red oxide exteriors, cream-yellow borders, and green window-shades is mesmerisingly Kolkata.

inner courtyard –
hearing the call
of an unseen bird

I wander the rooms in a trance. To be so close to the living space of someone I have admired, someone whose works I have studied and someone whose book of poetry I have been named after, is overwhelming. The dining area is well-preserved, his bedroom is pristine and the little bits of framed poems bring the man to life. I feel a strange connect to this wise figure. It’s precisely then that I happen to enter the room where Gurudev had taken his final breath. There is no one else here now. I stand in the emptiness.

sudden shuffle of feet—
somewhere a guard yells
“No photos!”

The guttural coo of a pigeon brings me back to the walls lined with the photos of his last journey. A sea of mourners had made it difficult for his son to reach the funeral on time, a plaque says.

hushed silence
each brick holds
the story together

At the gallery, a uniformed watchman asks people to maintain a line. Suddenly, he decides to give the guests a guided tour of the gallery, instead. A family of 6 asks him questions in Bengali. He animatedly answers the group with enthusiasm.

a clock strikes 4
the conversation
dissipates for chai

As I make my way out a couple of hours later, a strange sense of having been there earlier lingers with me. I dismiss the thought.

I have spent many days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I came to sing remains unsung.
― Rabindranath Tagore

The next day, unexpectedly, I am introduced to a doctor. And he asks me to wait for a few minutes. He reemerges with a little book for me – his translations of poems by Tagore. Some places will always live in us. The songs will be sung.

Cityscapes – leftovers

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Haibun by Dr Brijesh Raj, India

Life

Our shape shifter cat leaves a line of lint on my work shirt. A mark of ownership. Fingers sinking into her plush persian fur are met with a tremor rippling through the curled up form. Shadowed soon after by a little rumble.

snack-song
the soft tinkle
of escaped kibble

The neighbor’s indie kitten inveigles herself where no cat has ever been after Faye’s mother. Into her heart. Armed with switch blades for claws and her Maker’s free-hand mask of Zorro, she is a speedy little super brat, everready for a scrap. Until the delivery man appears at the door.

Death

leftovers
a crow picks one cheeseball
over another

Faded orange square tiles with a black border, lead to a small desk and working area. An old Nateshwar statue in a tandava pose adorns a niche to the left. The wall opposite almost fittingly, hosts a goggle-eyed papier mache Ganeshji and a large film poster entitled TERRORIST. Followed shortly after by open faced cabinets neatly filled with books. Two novels bear the name of the lady with the shock of frizzy, silver hair, who has requested me to see her aged labrador. The crossed, weak hind limbs and weeping, fast growing shoulder mass look ominous. In the garden outside, large sunlit lianas abzorb a symphony of bird song that does not reach their ears.

vacant gaze
her daily fix
bleeds black

Rebirth

carousel
picking up the pieces
yet again

There is something endearing about those lips puckered in plain sight. A hand easily rests around each other’s waist. And the eyes with a depth of feeling reserved for each other.

same tree, new shoots
little shoes
scuff up the playground

Cityscapes – yellow gulmohar

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Haiku and haibun by Raamesh Gowri Raghavan, India

Amygdala hijack

narrow road
the unvoiced call
of the deep north

Allusions to Bashō apart, it’s really the broad, multi-laned. pothole-free roads of the deep south that call to me. For they take me to the red sands of the theris, the banana orchards on the side road leading to my ‘ancestral’ village, the little granite kundrams with their little granite temples, the winking elephant at the Tirunellaiappar complex, the smell of hot filter coffee and paruppu vadais at the roadside stalls, mixed with the sounds of the speeding, honking TNSTC buses, and the gentle ripples of the Tamraparni, as she turns golden in the light of the setting sun… and I live these tiny moments over and over again as the trucks rumble by my Mumbai (well, Thane) house, turning them into core memories that will go with me to my pyre.

dawn chorus
the clink clink clink
of coffee vessels

blackout
the stars light up
one by one

between loose tea
and garam masala
the shop’s mandir

yellow gulmohar
on the cars and the road
and the rubbish heap

on the old dust
of the tyre-less Fiat
red gulmohar

petrichor
only the wash water
of the cars