Emergency haiku

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
from frozen dark, undaunted
slim tulips blossom

old before her time
neuro-tangled brain, and yet
memories blossom

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
called to dark, nourishing ground
a leaf carves her path

willow once weeping
windblown limp branches twisting
now hand-woven chair

midlife wants a cat
with two a.m. sweats and frets
perfect companion

lichen clings brittle
with crevice-rooted cedar
rock solid marriage

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

out of frying pan
flips manic energy swing
into dancing fire

code white certify
in secure facility
like catch and release

paranoia spins
relentlessly drives mind fields
eccentricity

downward social drift
day by day spare change sustains
no place in this world