Writing the Memory Prompt

In my hand-written journal
(yeah, where all the richest mojo tales twine)
I often use little memory prompts:

"On the bank w/tattered white bedspread--"

or

"Cowboy hat--strawberries--White Rain--"

Always intending to go back in and fill in the blanks,
because, surely, I could never forget, say, dew drops
on the broken glass.


Teaching composition has, in turn, taught me
to think about the finest details
that go into the best writings;
so I share with my students:

[from Coles' Teaching Composition]

"Where for me now are all those rich experiences I must have had in the fourth or fifth grade? Where are all those lesser known Shakespeare plays that I have read but was never 'made' to write papers on and never talked over with anyone? Why is it that when I go tiptoeing back through a diary I kept in high school and come upon the entry: 'With Marilyn tonight: the greatest yet'--I can no longer more remember that night than I can remember what was great about it? . . . To go through life Themewriting my experience into bloodless abstractions--we had a swell time; she was really cool; it was a great trip--is to end up finally with a great deal of that life having trickled through my fingers."

Here's a glass of wine to us bloggers
who attempt to capture some of those moments
and to disseminate the true multiculturism of our daily lives.