Haiku for Healing – Finding Healing in Haibun

Glenn Coats, an enviably accomplished poet and winner of numerous awards, shares in this article how instead of being burnt-out by the childhood trauma of sexual assault he faced, he found a voice and healing in words.

The Words In Between

When my sister and I were growing up, she would often ask if I could keep a secret. In fact, she still asks me that. In truth, I was very good at keeping things to myself. I kept two secrets for almost fifty years. Both of them centered around childhood traumas. I was nearly sixty years old when I told my wife what I had experienced, and to my surprise, she was not surprised. In this article I will look back at my own writings to see what I revealed through the years, and to consider how those writings helped me to move forward.

My first poems were song lyrics. I don’t think I began writing them because there was something I needed to get off my chest. I simply loved music and wanted to write words like Bob Dylan. However, in returning to those early songs as a way of stepping into this article, I found that even then, I was beginning to look back on what had happened. Here is a stanza from a song written in 1974 (“The Wave”):

I know you to be brave
It’s no sin to be afraid
Come lower your sail
Come tell me your tale
Together, we can be brave.

Glenn R. Schiraldi pointed to psychologist James Pennebaker in an article about childhood trauma. “He reasoned that keeping painful emotions all inside was not healthy, that unexpressed emotion would as Shakespeare wrote, “whisper the o’er-fraught heart and bid it break.” *1 Those painful emotions that Schiraldi writes about began to appear in my haiku.

troubled nights
one more question
without an answer *2

winter wind
secrets come in
from the cold *3

submerged rowboats
the forgiveness parts
of prayer *4

fingers of clouds
another lost boat
nudges the shore *5

coming to terms with darkness river snow *6

In the above examples, only I understood the experiences I was writing about, although other writers might empathize with the struggles I tried to capture. It wasn’t until I began writing haibun that I confronted those childhood memories head on.

After attending grades 1 – 6 at a small elementary school, I began seventh grade in a middle school with students from all over town. I was short, frail, extremely quiet, and a year younger than my classmates—easy prey for the bullies I encountered. One kid zeroed in on me and pounded my shoulders on a daily basis. I never said a word. Here is part of my first haibun (“Night Brings Peace”) in which I confronted what had occurred:

Seventh grade. No one saw me without a shirt. My parents never noticed my bruised shoulder which looked like a map of the moon. I never played ball in the yard bare-chested. Never left the bath without a towel pulled tightly around me.

I could have turned George in to Mr. Bear who taught English. I could have shown the school nurse my arm or gone to the principal. I did not.

At the end of that school year, my family moved to another town and I never saw George Muglia again. His old man beat him and his clothes smelled like dirty laundry. Those things I remember. He taught me a lesson. It isn’t that meanness carries from generation to generation; it’s that nothing is gained by keeping silent.

yard work
my shoulder predicts
more rain *7

I don’t know when I realized that the physical symptoms I experienced were indeed tied to my childhood. Insomnia and nightmares persisted for years, along with pain in my shoulders and neck. In an article about trauma-informed care by the National Library of Medicine, the author writes, “Trauma can affect one’s beliefs about the future via loss of hope, limited expectations about life, fear that life will end abruptly or early, or anticipation that normal life events won’t occur (e.g., access to education, ability to have a significant and committed relationship, good opportunities for work).” *8 In high school, I believed I would never marry or ever be a father. I remember praying that I would reach twenty-eight years old. Thankfully, I was wrong about those predictions.

In “The Pull of Current,” I address directly the sexual abuse I experienced when I was a Cub Scout. My father came along on a camping trip with me but chose to stay in a hotel rather than sleep in a tent. It was while he was away that the scout master molested me. Again, I never told my father or anyone at the time but that incident has haunted me ever since. “The Pull of Current” centers around choosing a birthday card for my father. Here is the conclusion of that haibun:

No, I want a card that says Remember the Night or The Night in Question. A card that will remind him of the camping trip in early spring when fathers and sons camped beside a cold creek. The night he left a boy alone in a tent and went off to find a hotel where his back would find a softer place to rest. That is when it happened. I am running out of chances to lay it to rest, a chance to give him back the peace I have hoarded all these years.

afternoon clouds
a taste of snow
in the river *9

I know that nightmares are reflections of the traumas that I was exposed to. I still experience nightmares but their intensity has dulled through the years. They don’t shake me the way they once did. Here is a haibun which describes the experience of one dream—one in which I seem to confront one of the bullies in my childhood.

Amends

Afternoon. I sketch a skiff on a new page, add rod holders and seats, an outboard motor cocked up and out of the water. Add color. Green sides with red on the bottom. Then use fine pens to add distress marks and shadow. I draw hills in the distance. Add greens and grays to the blue. Hours pass. Does drawing impact memory? Will the act of drawing stimulate physical emotions?

midnight moon
shadows shimmer
beneath the dock

Later that night. A child is inside a glass room. The boy is rocking in an office chair. Two tufts of hair stick up from his forehead like a cat’s ears. Eyes are green—ringed in dark circles. Arms and legs are thin. His striped shirt is buttoned up to the top. He looks like me. The shadow of a figure looms above him.

riverside
the flinch of a shoulder
in the dark

I break through the glass door and tell the child that he is safe. My foot presses on the small of the man’s back. I step as hard as I can. Harder. “Help will be here soon,” I tell the boy, and wake before anyone arrives.

downstream the feathers that float untouched

Naomi Shihab Nye chose this poem by Yannis Ritsos for her collection by others titled This Same Sky.

Every word is a
doorway
to a meeting, one often
cancelled,
and that’s when a word
is true:
               when it insists
on the meeting. *10

There is no question in my mind that writing has been my salvation. It has been as important as bread and water. As in the poem by Ritsos, my words had to be written down. Writing has helped me to clarify my world, and to make sense of what has happened. As a young teacher, a school board member once asked me, “Why would someone so quiet want to be a teacher?” Writing has helped me face the deep silence and the weight of secrets I have kept. My wife always understood that and let me write my way forward. Thanks to her, words on paper, and endless prayers, I have found peace in my life.

snow on the lake
memories I pull
from the deep *11

I believe that many writers revisit the same events and people again and again throughout their lives. I think of stories by Sam Shepard that often reflect on the broken relationships between fathers and sons. When I read poems by Len Roberts, I meet his abusive and alcoholic father repeatedly in his work. In writing this article about childhood trauma, I realized that I have been doing the same thing as I am always trying to come to terms with what occurred so very long ago. There is always silence around the subject as I choose what to share with others. There is always the silence after a piece is published when no one knows what to say to me. I wrote “A Train Crossing the Prairie” after I finished this article for Haiku for Healing. In the poem, I am remembering when I was in my thirties and my youngest child was just born; I was teaching and attending graduate school. One of my professors became interested in my work and encouraged me to keep a log of moments when I wrote. I see now the gift he gave me and how those poems helped me to move forward. This poem seems to sum up a lifetime of feelings for me.

A Train Crossing the Prairie

It is not like a baseball
smashing
through a kitchen window.
It’s not like that—
doesn’t happen in an instant;
and it’s not like a fall
from a tree—
some iodine and bandages
and a week later
the cuts are healed.

The effects appear slowly
over time:
It is knowing the answers
but never raising a hand
or voice in class.
It is the silence that creeps
into conversations
on a blind date.
It is the shrug in a shoulder
or a look of weariness
in the eyes.
It is the insomnia and dreams—
memories
of touch and taste—
it is your wife
who wraps around you
at three a.m.
and knows that something
is wrong,
and in that sweet cocoon
of darkness,
you want to tell her
what happened
and almost do
but not yet.

the deer within an arm’s length dusk *12

Notes:

*1. Glenn R. Schiraldi, Psychology Today, February 24, 2025.
*2. Glenn G. Coats, Frogpond, Volume 33:2, 2010.
*3. Glenn G. Coats, Snow on the Lake, Pineola Publishing, 2013.
*4. Glenn G. Coats, Another Lost Boat, Pineola Publishing, 2022.
*5. Glenn G. Coats, Another Lost Boat, Pineola Publishing, 2022.
*6. Glenn G. Coats, Another Lost Boat, Pineola Publishing, 2022.
*7. Glenn G. Coats, Haibun Today, Volume 5:4, December 2011.
*8. National Library of Medicine, Trauma-Informed Care in Behavioral Health Services.
*9. Glenn G. Coats, Haibun Today, Volume 5:4, December 2011.
*10. Naomi Shihab Nye, This Same Sky, Simon and Schuster, 1992.
*11. Glenn G. Coats, The Heron’s Nest, Volume XV, March 2013.
*12. Glenn G. Coats, A Lantern on the Bridge, Pineola Publishing, 2025.

If you have any questions about Haiku for Healing, please use the Haiku for Healing contact form on our Contact page.

Coming up on Monday, 21st September 

The final part of the Haiku for Healing project which looks at how haibun facilitates healing.

Bios

Glenn G. Coats lives with his wife Joan in Carolina Shores, North Carolina. Glenn’s haiku collection about rivers, Furrows of Snow, was published by Turtle Light Press in 2019. A Synonym For Gone was published by Snapshot Press in 2021. His new collection about waterways, Another Lost Boat, was published by Pineola Press in 2022.

Sonam Chhoki finds the Japanese short-form poetry resonates with her Tibetan Buddhist upbringing. She is inspired by her father, Sonam Gyamtsho, the architect of Bhutan’s non-monastic modern education and by her mother, Chhoden Jangmu, who taught her: “Being a girl doesn’t mean you can’t do anything.” She is the principal editor, and co-editor of haibun for the online journal of Japanese short forms, cattails.

Her chapbook of haibun, The Lure of the Threshold was published in May 2021. Mapping Absences, a collaboration of haibun, tan bun and tanka prose with Mike Montreuil was published in 2019. Another collaboration with Geethanjali Rajan: Unexpected Gift was published in November 2021. She organised a year-long email course in 2024 for The Haiku Foundation’s Haiku for Parkinson’s project.

Read past Haiku for Healing posts here.

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