Photo: Dave Bleasdale/Creative Commons.Flickr

David Oates explores the happy chaos of family life in today’s feature of the International Women’s Haiku Festival.

two young women
with three young children
try to visit

The scenario Oates describes in this delightful poem plays out (literally) in parks, on play dates, and at extended family gatherings everywhere: Two worlds – that of children and that of the adults charged with keeping them safe and teaching them how to behave – collide.  With the operative word “try,” Oates hints at the children’s mischief and the women’s frustration – in short, at the pandemonium of family life.

David Oates is the host of “Wordland,” a radio show of spoken word on wuga.org.  He is the author of three haiku collections: Shifting with My Sandwich Hand, Drunken Robins and, forthcoming, The Deer’s Bandanna.