In Between the Suds

The prompt at One Deep Breath this week is process. I have never given much thought to my own writing process. In fact, I have never been much of a process person at all. I have an aversion to process, procedure, routine. I have always blamed this, if blame is the right word, on my mother’s beautiful attention to order, cleanliness, routine. She was Martha Stewart before Martha Stewart was Martha Stewart. She was the consummate June Cleaver. She made a wonderful home for me, her only child, and that, until she went back to work in the world, was her only job. I was a rebel: messy, late, very unpredictable.

This is why, when I had children, I wanted to be a stay-at-home-mom. I had visions of bundt pans, fresh squeezed orange juice and every toy in its place. Because my mom was so good at being a mom, I wanted to give my kids the happy, orderly, predictable life my mother gave me.

Read the fairytale.
Try on the slippers. Buy the gown.
Wait for instructions.

Best laid plans, you know… Of course, having the cluttered soul of an artist, I am not organized. I am not in the least routinely inclined. I will drop the house-cleaning in a minute to take a walk in the woods and look for birds or bugs. I try. But I am no June Cleaver. This has always been my “cross to bear” with writing, too. No discipline. But I love words, and for whatever the reason, I have a knack for putting them in the right order. As for the dishes, the clothes, the toys…

In search of answers,
bird song, fox track, snow flake path.
Only pencil knows.

The poem can’t speak.
Birds, trees, feelings are nameless.
Poet is not home.

Ice creeps down windshield.
How to say cracks look like map?
That is the process.

And so, I have had to accept the fact that I can’t always make time for my writing. Not now. But, I can make my writing during the time I have. I can write between the suds, so to speak, between the dust bunnies, between the bus and the grocery store, between the lines on the road where my Pathfinder hopefully is as I write and drive and change the satellite radio to XM Kids. This is my process.

Interestingly, at least I think it’s interesting, I wrote the above haiku last night, after the kids went to bed. The rest were written this morning under 1 ½ year-old’s-feet.

For your reading pleasure, please avert your eyes from the unmade beds, the vacuum in the middle of the living room, the art projects waiting to be hung, and enjoy these haiku!

Between wet dishes,
in suds on plastic Tonka plate,
the poem smiles.

Not in coffee shop,
not in quiet of sunrise.
Words among the toys.

Chirp of plastic phone.
Pleasant drone of cartoon bear.
Here poem sings.