National Poetry Month has been more of an adventure than I had expected. I took up the challenge of posting a poem every day for 30 days to prove to myself that I have the writing discipline to follow through. After having proclaimed my intentions to my entire online community, I had many, many witnesses to watch my progress.
Of course already having pledged to write a haiku every day in 2014 helped. My haiku practice was already in place, but before April those poems had been posted only in a private Facebook group. For the month of April, I had to find the courage to send my little haiku out into the big, bad online world. And I admit at first I was very nervous. After all, it's difficult enough to write a poem every day, much less a good one. Sending out any poem, the good, the bad and the downright uninspired seemed like a huge risk.
But the response from readers has been more positive than I could have imagined. I've gained more followers on Twitter and have had some of my haiku re-tweeted to spread them even further. That amazed me. In a workshop I attended about creating an online presence as a poet, the director of Poet's House in New York advised tweeting lines of poetry. He was so right. There are actually people out there who are looking for poetry online. I just had to give them what they wanted.
I even have some readers who want me to continue posting my daily haiku for them. The encouragement and readership I've gained makes me feel the need to keep sharing - perhaps just less often. I have cringed when posting poems that I didn't think were worthy, so from now on I'll just share the highlights of my weekly practice. And keep the others to myself. But I promise that I will write a haiku every day for the rest of the year. I'm up to 119 with only 246 to go.
And so on this last day in April, the 30th day of haiku postings, I bid National Poetry Month 2014 adieu with one more springtime haiku:
flocks of hoodies swoopmiddle school hallways winging true for June's promise
