I Remember - A Writing Prompt

I remember . . .  Powerful opening words to prose or poetry.  The words conjure the theme of journey and exploration.

The D.H. Lawrence poem Tortoise Shout explores many themes; love, desire, relationship, something complicated, something realistic. In the excerpt below, he explores sounds.  He begins with the words, I remember, when I was a boy.

This is our writing prompt for the March 10 read-around at Wellington Square.  

Start with the words, I remember . . .

Try not to edit yourself.  See where the pen leads.  Take a journey, explore, meander. 

Excerpt from Tortoise Shout

I remember, when I was a boy,

I heard the scream of a frog, which was caught with his foot in the mouth of an up-starting snake;

I remember when I first heard bull-frogs break into sound in the spring;

I remember hearing a wild goose out of the throat of night

Cry loudly, beyond the lake of waters;

I remember the first time, out of a bush in the darkness, a nightingale's piercing cries and gurgles startled the depths of my soul;

I remember the scream of a rabbit as I went through a wood at midnight;

I remember the heifer in her heat, blorting and blorting through the hours, persistent and irrepressible;

I remember my first terror hearing the howl of weird, amorous cats;

I remember the scream of a terrified, injured horse, the sheet-lightning

And running away from the sound of a woman in labor, something like an owl whooing,

And listening inwardly to the first bleat of a lamb,

The first wail of an infant,

And my mother singing to herself,

And the first tenor singing of the passionate throat of a young collier, who has long since drunk himself to death,

The first elements of foreign speech

On wild dark lips.