YOUNG READER POET-NOVELIST VALERIE WORTH DIES AT 60

Valerie Worth Bahlke, a poet and novelist for young readers, has died at her home in Clinton, N.Y. She was 60. The cause was cancer, her family said.

Bahlke, who wrote under her maiden name Valerie Worth, had many interests, from astronomy to gardening to meditation, which became the subject matter she wove into her poetry. She sought to present ordinary things in a fresh way.She was most widely known for her "small poems" for children, composed in simple free verse. Of a safety pin, she wrote:

Closed, it sleeps

On its side

Quietly,

The silver

Image

Of some

Small fish;

Opened, it snaps

Its tail out

Like a thin

Shrimp, and looks

At the sharp

Point with a

Surprised eye.