An Exercise in Poem Writing

What did you hear, once or repeatedly, 
and you still remember it?

As a child? 'You shouldn't do it.'

Another phrase, from a later stage?

'You had such a mighty future ahead,
and wasted it.'

What words or images point to your
origins?

small orange chrysanthemums
a rosary made of acorns
rusty leaves
a little forest down the street
a lint tree that used
to live with us

a yellow gate
that wasn't there
a dark blue cat
a date
an altar in the church
green space
the night sky, ink
a book, stuck in the passage way
or somewhere else

a door
the wooden stairs,
feet, kissing the steps
an alphabet
a Mona Lisa cover of a chocolate box
a bath made of white enamel

weeds
red bricks
Andromeda
arythmetics

tamarines

sand
camels from another land
a shepherd and a lamb
lupin and rhubarb
a shade, a stove
a caravan

love

***

How to write one's own poem?

Insert the title, Why I am the way I am, before the list. Read the list. Delight in it. 
Savour the words & images.


(after Sheila Banon, at the celebration of a year-long memoir writing course "Twelve Windows. Writing life vignettes")




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