The poem at the heart of Reluctant Whaler Girl was written by our Creative Team Member Anne, who was also the keeper of family pictures and letters. and who was raised by the reluctant whaler girl herself. Anne wrote it for her niece, Creative Team Member Amy, who was showing more than a few inklings of interest in the whole enterprise.
ANNIE for Amy, by Anne
She looks at me tentatively from her oval frame –
the child in white voile and blue ribbons
whose home for fifteen years
was on the sea in that tiny space –
six by ten perhaps –
allotted to the captain and his wife;
her life encompassed by a bunk, a trunk, a bible,
the smell of whale oil
and the taste of hardtack,
spread with a thin film
of New England jam.
She knew the grass green
and mountain purple of the oceans,
the smell of Peruvian grapes,
the dusty shudder of earthquake,
and the humid roar of hurricanes.
She heard the languid beat of African drums
and knew mutiny
and loneliness
and fear.
I only knew her 'old'
and held her hand
as she died and left her youth with me.
Families are fortunate if they have a creative team member like Anne, inclined to save and organize its bits and pieces into a family history until another such relative comes along. Families are even luckier if they have a family story-teller or poet. For that's what keeps a family's' heart full, and full hearts stay full
generation to generation. We were doubly fortunate. Not only did Anne save the stuff, she wrote the poem.
The poem has facts that we could have found out in other ways. Annie must have experienced earthquakes because most of the land she walked on and the waters she floated on were part of the Ring of Fire; it defies logic to think there had been none in her fifteen years. But how she experienced them comes from its poetry, for Annie knew the dusty shudder of earthquake.
Lines like these are all that came between the Annie we could describe in a few sentences and see in a few pictures and the Annie we know now.
Many of the Reluctant Whaler Girl products come from illustrations of this poem. Here is a backpack. Guess what line of the poem it comes from.
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