Here is the poem written by Kelly's Aunt
Jamie and read by Grandma Marlene when she was visiting from Utah
this spring.
Aunt Jamie was 9 years old when she wrote this poem many years
ago.
Stillness
Out of the stillness
on a cool dark night,
something came creeping with a clear, bright light.
It wakened all the birds, even the funny little wrens.
It wakened all the animals sleeping in their dens.
Then all of a sudden without a sound
a brand new morning was shining all around.
This was taught to me by
my father, Michael William Smith, and taught to him by his mother,
Psyche Constance May, and by her mother, Constance Cresdee, who
was a professional pianist and composer and played in numerous
concert halls and churches throughout England. We believe that
the origins to these ditties are from the English Victorian vaudeville
stage. Kerrie K.-W. Class
of 2005. (Sam's mum)
Sam's grandpa visiting from England taught us the first ditty!
AN ENGLISH DITTY
One fine
day in the middle of the night,
The river Thames it caught a light,
A deaf man heard it'
A blind man saw it,
A man with no legs on ran to the fire station,
The fire engine came with no wheels on,
And ran over to dead dogs and nearly killed one!
And that's the truth.
ANOTHER ENGLISH DITTY
One fine day I had
a rare old spree,
I went swimming in the deep blue sea,
How it happened, goodness only knows,
But some naughty boy came and stole my clothes,
I had not a stitch to cover me,
And everybody on the beach to see,
Ten little fingers,
Ten little toes,
Two little eyes and one little nose,
All the photographers would have had a lovely view,
If, I hadn't had a copy of the Santa Barbara News.
And that's the truth!!!
When It Breaks, Which Comes First
To wake,
But not
In diving in,
I became just a tad polar,
Adjusting to the morning sea
For it was not yet solar,
when something broke.
And when do we stand
Down to feel the ocean floor?
With our feet in full fin,
(Our heels very close to our chin.)
The sound at the seam
Of the surf at the shore,
That in and that out,
Where the tide's a rip,
And so obtuse
It may have tore,
and then, something's loose.
Even our breath
forms a line
To climb
The snorkel's ladder,
Just when I heard
The difference, and woke,
The same thing broke.
(Water in the ladder
makes me choke.)
Just when wide eyes blackest
Thin to gray
And wait...
For the palest straw-light
To mount beach drifts of beaten fray,
The day broke.
(Not unlike the camel's back or a weathered haystack.)
At breakfast time
Fast I ate,
I nearly caught that egg
Salted and circling my plate.
Something broke.
That dumb-thing broke.
It seemed to shell out its yolk,
And shouting short of breath with
All my hoarseness and
All my amends and
Most of those pieces had only the smallest of friends.
(I'm afraid we couldn't put it together again.)
A broom met my china,
The pieces combined
And into the waste sighed that pile of brine.
I still had my bread,
As ginger it fell.
"Run as fast as you can to class!"
Fast was fast,
We (my bread and I) ran so well
Made it in, juried safe,
Before the last bell.
The fox before the river spoke,
And wading in deep enough,
One knows
Something broke
In pieces yet again.
The sun easily overhead
by this time,
Like an egg, less the shell,
It had dropped its' own spine!
No fall from blue "ciel",
Despite Chicken Little,
Things were looking up,
Not at all brittle,
When something broke
Raining down the middle.
Now a seagull over bait,
My teacher came fishing for homework papers
which were a little too late.
Hook, line, and sinker
She swallowed my fish tale.
White lies before me, what lies ahead?
So I slipped once
and twice
It was a sad, boggy place
Suddenly I had egg all over
My face.
My body cast off, or untied from its dock,
Left in a jam in a jellyfish flock,
My mind on man-of-war,
No caviar,
My salmon yacht had strayed too far.
But in cross examination,
My homework swam upstreamly late.
If I cast this next line,
It's to cut to the chaste
Away from the bone,
Since my mind was erased,
Homework with no home.
In braking that
first time,
When we began,
In diving in,
When my chin churned round to the sand,
Then my mind went opaque,
It had set sail
On an embryonic lake.
I opened my eyes in the office
Of some physician,
The one whose hands
Were touching only to listen.
It was then that I discovered
Where I had been:
Diving in the deep
And colliding with the bottom,
Makes what is broken, sense,
And sense is that it tautens.
So titan in its rise,
I must loan my cries to it
And after settling
Cradle down,
I watch the
Blue Bermuda intuit...
It swims like a tortoise,
Shell on its back,
Back to its ginger-soft shack.
Whose hands I felt on my lost enterprises?
Were those of my Osteopath
(He's full of disguises.)
Now that broken
thing,
Now is only bending,
Now begins what feels
How mermaids sew,
The slowest touch in mending.
So while a while it will be,
We come to speak in poetry.
Stay with those seams between your
face,
Be patient to the bottom,
If you dive deep into your bed
The ocean will come calling...
And when the tide
is in your head,
Not that you can ever lose it,
As with Humpty and the ginger bread
We choose the will to reinvent...
With mirth of waiting ...
No pretends,
We know that something glues-it.
Vieja Valley School
Santa Barbara, CA 93110