Nurse poets among us.
April is National Poetry Month, and all kinds of excellent poetry will be highlighted in various online and other venues, including, of course, in AJN’s Art of Nursing column, where the poem “Cat-a-tonic” by Shawna Swetech is featured this month (click on the pdf in the upper right corner of the landing page for the best version). I’m not a poet, though there are many nurse poets among us, and I’m not a fan of every poem I meet, but one form that is guaranteed to interest me every time is the haiku.
A short, simple poetic form.
Centuries ago, Japanese poets wrote the first haiku poems. A haiku has a very specific structure: three lines only, with exactly five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the third. Five-seven-five. (Though not every haiku today follows these rules strictly.) A haiku might rhyme, or not; it may or may not include punctuation or typical capitalization.
“Scrubs” not “uniforms” –
simpler than we used to wear.
Still, I miss my whites.
Traditionally, haiku have been written to celebrate nature. The best of these paint beautiful pictures in a few simple words. They are often very musical to the ear, as well, and come alive when read aloud. Best of all, they can engage the creativity of young and old, and poets and non-poets alike.
We want to read your haiku about nursing (and health care).
Our work may not be a traditional subject for haiku, but describing our world to others in haiku form might be an effective and accessible way to share what nurses and nursing are about (or to discover new perspectives for ourselves).
Writing haiku can also be fun; a haiku can often be written in a few minutes. A concise description of the haiku form and its history can be found here.
We hope readers of this post will share their own efforts at writing haiku as comments here on this blog or on our Facebook page!
wrapping up 2019 poetry month with
My mastectomy
was a volcanic warning
a mass exodus
I am a nurse, not a poet, but I think this haiku describes us perfectly.
Sweet gentle soul, compassionate caring
Pure as snow, heart of mercy
Not an angel, just humble
She’d climbed Denali.
Now the stairs to the bathroom
are an equal task.
I’ve written poetry for a several years now, even been published a couple times, but I never tried my hand at haikus before. This will be fun.
I started working as a nurse a few years ago. This is a haiku about that time.
New nurse meets doctor (part 1)
He will yell at you.
He has a reputation.
I had to help him.
New nurse meets doctor (part 2)
“You need anything
else?”
“Just stay here for moral
support.”
He replied.
Though not at all a poet, I’m sharing the best lesson I’ve learned while caring for loved ones and patients in those last hours (or perhaps few days), at their bedsides as they lay dying, and “no longer responsive”:
Not life’s end just yet
I’m still here-I’m listening-
please don’t ignore me
Catastrophic care.
I teach terrible things that
No one wants to learn.