Silver Penny Memories

For the last few weeks my husband and I have been preparing for a MEGA garage sale,which we had last Saturday.
This entailed sorting through years and years of memories and accumulation of "STUFF".
Among that so called "STUFF" were quite a collection of old books and memorabilia.
One book, which had belonged to my mother. "Silver Pennies", by Blanche Tennings Thompson, is a collection of poems for the young and young at heart.

I fondly remember this sweet book with it's gray cover. A fairy like child is reaching out to catch what looks like silver coins cascading down from a sliver of a moon.

I have kept this book with my things all these years .

In the Preface The author writes ,"You must have a silver penny to get into Fairyland".
She then goes on to offer the "silver pennies" and warns one to be careful how you handle them,because their lustre is easily dimmed.
"If a poem is worthy at all, it isn't tough-- it is frail and exqiusite, a mood a moment of sudden understanding, a cobweb which falls apart at a clumsy touch".

So with that introduction I will write the poem that first touched my dear little soul so many many years ago when this book was placed into my little hands.


THE LITTLE TURTLE by Vachel Lindsay


There was a little turtle
He lived in a box.
He swam in a puddle
He climbed on the rocks.

He snapped at a mosquito.
He snapped at a flea.
He snapped at a minnow.
He snapped at me.

He caught the mosquito.
He caught the flea.
He caught the minnow.
But he didn't catch me.