First Clear Memory?

In a poetry-class today, the students reported on "statements of poetics" written by Dylan Thomas, Philip Larkin, Frank O'hara, and Denise Levertov. Then we had about 15 minutes left in which to write, and I gave the students 17 prompts, all having to do with childhood. In response to one or more of the prompts, they could generate material in any way they wanted: free-writing, listing, starting a poem, etc.

I chose the prompt concerning one's first clear memory of childhood. Of course, the idea of having a first clear memory is debatable, made more debatable by the discipline of psychology. How do we know it's the first clear memory? Maybe earlier in our lives we had a clear memory that was of an even earlier time, but now we've replaced it. Or maybe the memory is as much a fiction as it is a faithful mental photograph of a very early "real" event in childhood. Or maybe we've repressed the first clear memory. What is a clear memory? Memory is such a complicated concept these days.

In any event, I came up with the following first draft of a poem about what I imagine to be my first clear memory from childhood. I'd always wanted to write about this memory, but I didn't get around to it until today.

First Memory: Snowbound

I am, and I am in snow. That is my first
clear memory. I’m on my back, and snow
surrounds me. I know I’m small. I feel
excessively bundled, although “excessively
bundled” is language that will come later.
It's been injected into the memory to help
account for a feeling. I feel excessively
bundled in black clothes, my face encircled
by a hood. Cold snow has risen up around me.
It is a problem. Immobile, I look up into
what I’ll describe now as the blank non-sky
of a snowy day. Adult faces appear above me.
They appear to laugh. I do not hear. They speak.
I hear words as sounds not words. The faces and voices
do not appear to take my being stuck—and now
anxious— seriously; the memory includes this
judgment. The memory ends there with me stuck,
over-bundled, cold, anxious, walled in by snow
I fell into backwards. History records that I
was extracted from the snow. My first clear
memory does not jibe with history. It leaves
me held in snow, looking up, restrained, alone.

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom