Why Write?

I've been thinking about why I suddenly decided to begin publishing my poetry and trying to improve my writing in order to make it publishable.  I certainly don't intend to supplement my income or launch a career at my age, but I notice the poems I'm writing are like a file card index of my memories. My new poems reflect seemingly random flotsam and jetsam that got caught in my imagination and never left me.  But why we notice one thing and not another--how we filter the stream of our life's events through our psyche--these things make up a person.  My touchstone moments are being manifested and recorded via my poems.