by Kelly

the morning of my

resolution dawns misty —

cold snow meets warm air

I didn’t pledge any New Year’s resolutions. The new year just came on too fast. It was Christmas and then, suddenly, it was January. I wanted any resolutions I made to be meaningful and realistic, and I felt that coming up with the perfect goal would require thought. Thought, of course, would require time. And time was in short supply.

But then the end of January arrived, and with it the Year of the Dragon. Chinese New Year presented me with a new opportunity to set a resolution. The crush of the holidays was gone. The visiting, out-of-town family members were safely back in their own homes. After so many days off at the end of the year, I’d readjusted to my work schedule. Finally, it seemed there was space for my mind to reassess, commit to change, and make a resolution.

And so, here it is: Starting today, everyday for the next month, I will write one haiku.

This may not seem like a difficult task. After all, I’ve been haiku’ing regularly for the past three years. But in the past six months, my haiku muscle has fallen out of practice. My posted haiku grew farther and farther apart. Often, I composed haiku in my mind, but those little poems never make it to the page (or screen) and ended up lost in the daily mental shuffle. This has frustrated me. I even wrote about it in a November post. But I didn’t change my ways.

Now, though, I am changing my ways. I am joining NaHaiWriMo, which is short for National Haiku Writing Month. Hundreds have joined the effort for the month of February.

NaHaiWriMo is an off-shoot of a similar idea. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. That month takes place in November and every year it has grown more and more popular with writers all over the world registering their daily word counts with the NaNoWriMo web site.

NaHaiWriMo has a Facebook page where participants can post their daily haiku and read the daily haiku of others’. It also posts a writing prompt every day for those who need help getting their ideas into haiku.

Head to the NaHaiWriMo Facebook page to learn more, and by all means, check back at Haiku By Two to see how my month of daily haiku is going.