First Day Back

It seems to me since time began,
It seems to be the rule,
That every teacher has to say,
First day back at school:

'What did you do in the holidays?
Write as much as you can,
Did you travel aboard this year
Or stay in a carvan?

Did you visit a stately home
Or walk in the countryside?
Remember to put in the details
So what I know you've tried.

Perhaps you went to the seaside,
Perhaps you stayed with Gran,
We'll call it "Holiday Memories"-now
Write as much as you can.'

Same old thing, year in year out,
And everybody knows
We'll have to write at least a page
Oh well, eyes down, here goes...

--June Crebbin

Flowering Umbrellas

Umbrellas are folded up like buds.
But umbrella buds don't open in the sun.
They flower in the rain instead
In all kinds of colours: black, green, and red.
Brown and white, and checked and striped.
Outside the school in the rain mothers stand
With umbrella flowers growing from their hands.

--Stanley Cook

from 'Arithmetic'

Arithmetic is where numbers fly
like pigeons in and out of your head.

Arithmetic tells you how many you lose or win
if you know how many you had
before you lost or won.

Arithmetic is seven eleven all good children
go to heaven - or five six bundle of sticks.

Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your
head to your hand to your pencil to your paper
till you get the right answer...

If you have two animal crackers, one good and one bad,
and you eat one and a striped zebra
with streaks all over him eats the other,
how many animal crackers will you have
if somebody offers you five six seven and you say
No no no and you say Nay nay nay
and you say Nix Nix Nix?

If you ask your mother for one fried egg
for breakfast and she give you
two fried eegs and you eat
both of them, who is better in arithmetic,
you or your mother?

--Carl Sandburg