With your pen and paper or at your personal computer, brainstorm a list of past events that stick out in your mind. Come up with at least 10.
From this list, select the two with which you feel the strongest emotional connection. Circle these or separate them from the rest. From these two memories, choose the one that you think about the most, that still confuses, enlightens or troubles you.
Beginning with the phrase "I remember" compose a few lines of pure description about this memory, its setting or its characters. Use your senses to describe what you tasted, smelled, felt, saw and heard.
Write a few lines to provide context on the situation and characters. Provide a detail from the character's past or state what this place was used for and what it or the person meant to you at the time.
Focusing on the dominant emotion that this memory evokes for you, describe how you felt and why. What was it that changed? Occurred? Was ignored?
Now shift to the present tense. Write a few lines describing yourself in your present life, paralleling your actions or emotions now to those in your memory.
Conclude the poem with a line or two providing a resonant image of one part of the memory. For example, give a glimpse of the character as you remember him or her now, a glimpse of the natural setting that you did not show originally.
Title your poem.