I think this is my first poem. It was written when I was seven, though time has dissolved my memory of the middle two lines, and it's about Jesus. It's stayed with me because my teacher Kitty Inman liked it, and I was in love with her. If she's still around, still am.

‘Let thunder roll’

Let thunder roll about the grave
And music play in the star-fall stave.
*
*
A kind and humble man was he
Who could walk on the sea.

Should you be wondering what a star-fall stave is, my piano teacher Miss Square [sic], with whom I was not in love, had told me that the lines on the page formed the staff or stave. Only later did I work out what she'd said. When my mother asked me what I wanted for my eighth birthday, I said, I want to give up piano lessons.