Every night there is a poem waiting for me. It's a new one each night although they all have the same rhythm. Sometimes I fall asleep before I write it but that's all right because I know there is another one for tomorrow. And often, I have two or three poems waiting for me, reminding me that I am a writer.

My nightly poems are a writing practice, as Natalie Goldberg would term it. It is a date I keep with myself, not every night but most of them. As any mother can attest too, time for poetry or stories or even press releases is squeezed out from between the laundry and the dishes and the homework. It is one of the shadows of motherhood, that to take for ourselves, we feel like we are taking it from someone else--our children, our partners, our friends. Guilt, along with love, accompanies us throughout our days.

Piles of fatigue
Sit on my bones like dirty dishes
Sighing, sleep whispers

The younger our children the more difficult it is to get time for our- selves, especially to find creative time. We yearn to create more than dinner. We long for forces larger than ourselves to course through our veins and find expression outside of our own skin. We can be creative caretakers if we can get out of our own way. Poetry is a way.

Last year, when my youngest was almost three, I found a way to give my muse a voice. After the kids were dreaming, the dishes done and the cats fed, I would write a poem. Three lines, but not a "true" haiku most would say. I called them Mother Haikus because they held my rhythm, the rhythm of my sleeping children, the rhythm of the afternoon stories and snacks, the rhythm of my blood, once joined to theirs. I wrote about my day. I wrote about what was right in front of me. My haikus took me into my breath and breathed through me onto the page. I kept them all in a notebook, spiral bound and lined, I could fit six on a page. They looked so neat, so productive, in order on the page.

He eats snow like it’s God’s frosting
In a silver bowl on the kitchen table
The yellow parakeet chirps

Mother Haikus reflect my life. Three lines instead of three journal pages. I can’t find time for long journal entries but I love that poems wait for me every night. As a practice, it teaches me to write from the moment, providing description in only a few words. As a non-fiction writer, the three lines give me a form that I can safely explore in. It is a container that fits my life. I could wish for hours in a room of my own to write beautiful prose and poetry but it will stay a wish for a few more years. For now, I write every day, maybe only three lines but those words capture my spirit, giving voice to something bigger than myself but something that is also me.

First son starts first grade
With a teacher who likes him
Tonight I can sleep

For mothers who write, or who want to be writers, Mother Haikus offer a daily practice, a writing exercise and a record of the mother journey. Like snapshots instead of video footage, they capture a moment of our lives. They can be done in in-between places -- waiting at the doctor’s office, while the pasta water boils, before getting out of bed, or in the car before soccer practice is over.

The classic haiku structure is three unrhymed lines of five, seven and five syllables. Traditionally, Japanese haiku has a pair of contrasting images, one suggesting presence in time and place and the other a more emotional observation. The masters, such as Basho, often make their setting something in the natural world so it’s concrete, not abstract. My poems are full of hot summer nights, prowling cats, and midnight clocks. The third line can be a surprise, adding new energy. But of course, when writing night poems, there are no rules.

My boys prowl the house
T-rex hunted in ancient ferns
All of them roar

Copyright © 2002 Anna Stewart. All rights reserved worldwide.