Emergency haiku
===============

* Elspeth MacEwan

As an emergency and urgent care psychiatrist, I find that writing haiku engenders a sense of purposeful focus in the midst of emotionally charged clinical work. I began exploring this poetic form with a “haiku kit.”1 This consisted of a book on haiku writing, a drawstring bag containing an assortment of words from which a poem can be created, and a blank book for the writer's own creations. Haiku writing and its evocative repetition of meaningful themes can induce a meditative state and, over time, a sense of wholeness. On two occasions, I chose the word “blossom.” Here are the results:

through gentle snow crust  
</br> from frozen dark, undaunted  
</br> slim tulips blossom  
</br>  

old before her time  
</br> neuro-tangled brain, and yet  
</br> memories blossom  
</br>  

Constructing these poems from words drawn at random from a little cloth bag is, I have found, a self-revealing process. Although the form is strict — a 5-syllable line, a 7-syllable line and another 5-syllable line — it provides enough scope to reflect on my particular stage of life, my love of nature, and healing themes.

gentle spiral down  
</br> called to dark, nourishing ground  
</br> a leaf carves her path  
</br>  

willow once weeping  
</br> windblown limp branches twisting  
</br> now hand-woven chair  
</br>  

midlife wants a cat  
</br> with two a.m. sweats and frets  
</br> perfect companion  
</br>  

lichen clings brittle  
</br> with crevice-rooted cedar  
</br> rock solid marriage  
</br>  

Some days in the emergency department inspire more unusual poetry, which I think of as “psycho haiku”:

out of frying pan  
</br> flips manic energy swing  
</br> into dancing fire  
</br>  

code white certify  
</br> in secure facility  
</br> like catch and release  
</br>  

paranoia spins  
</br> relentlessly drives mind fields  
</br> eccentricity  
</br>  

downward social drift  
</br> day by day spare change sustains  
</br> no place in this world  
</br>  

## REFERENCE

1.  1. Dupont LH. *The Haiku Box*. Vermont: Journey Editions; 2001.