Let’s Pretend!
My home is a castle
Tall and grand
Set high on a hill
In a faraway land,
Where clouds are pink and
Horses stand
Guarding me
And my fairy band.
We play together
Till break of day,
Dance with the pixies
Then flutter away
On wings as light as snowflakes.
In the meadows and glades
With flowers fair;
Our playground dwells
Beyond compare,
Where daisy chains
I weave with care
And place them daintily
In my hair.
Here, each happy day
Is clear and bright,
Filled with magic
And delight!
Bubble, bubble, boil and trouble
Fill my cauldron on the double
With slime of frog and pooh of bear
And Daddy’s oldest underwear
With fish’s scales, mermaid’s nails,
Dragon’s breath and lizard’s tails
Tear of tiger, eye of slug
A squirt from the bum of a citrus bug
Look out! Daddy’s had a hunch
About what he just downed for lunch.
Bubble, trouble, had some fun,
Drop the cauldron, run, run, run!
Jessica Nelson-Tyers
Ants in my pants
There’s a bee in my bonnet,
I know I’ll be stung
but I can’t yell for help
’cause the cat’s got my tongue.
I’ve got rocks in my head,
my heart’s on my sleeve,
the frog in my throat
is refusing to leave
and I’m not really sure
what is going to become
of the butterflies fluttering
round in my tum.
To think that I nearly
forgot to include
that my leg is being pulled
and my ear is being chewed!
My patience with you
is just ready to crack.
I lent you a hand
and it hasn’t come back!
So sorry for making
a big song and dance
but there’s more on my mind
Jenny Erlanger
The Catch of the Evening
When the gully breeze bustled through the gums
skimming the heat from the day
we bowled out of the house
and set up stumps under the blue gum.
As always, the catches were what mattered.
Mum’s was the first.
She glanced up from yanking a thistle out of the hardened pitch
and plucked the ball from the air.
Jack caught me out on the full
ball clasped tight against his chest
his whoops and air-punches claiming more skill than he displayed.
Dad didn’t even get a look in
with his collection of one-hand-one-bounces
but I caught him mid-air with a spectacular leap from atop the slide.
Then, as the mosquitos herded us indoors,
I turned to grab the stumps and saw the uncontested winner.
Our blue gum. It had caught the moon
and was holding it triumphantly
in the crook of a branch.
by Kristin Martin
WORM-FARM BLUES
It’s a no-good life livin’ in this worm-farm—
It’s no life a worm would choose.
We’re writhin’ around, tangled and mangled
Topsied and turvied and confused.
There’s too darn many in this worm-farm
We’ve all got the worm-farm blues.
We loop to and fro
with nowhere to go
singin’ the worm-farm blues:
Chorus:
We’ve a dream in our head
Of a vegetable bed.
We know it’s not far away.
With room to roam
And plenty of loam.
But we’ll never see that day.
Oh Blues! It’s blues all the way!
There’s nowhere to go in this chock-a-block worm-farm—
No place where we can snooze.
We twist and we twine, huddled and muddled,
contorted and thwarted and abused.
And all of us here in this worm-farm
are sufferin’ the worm-farm blues.
We’re just ravellin’
Can’t do travellin’
We just sing the worm-farm blues.
Is there anybody there listenin’ to this worm-farm?
Anyone to hear our views?
We tumble in a jumble, pulsing and convulsing.
We’re rumpled and crumpled and bruised.
We‘re goin’ on strike in this worm-farm:
There’ll be no more worm-farm poos!
We hate this scramblin’
We wanna be ramblin’
away from the worm-farm blues.
© Kate O’Neil
Wormy Work
Earthworms don’t have bony bits
and so they’re called invertebrates.
There’s billions living in the soil
that burrow, stretch, contract and coil.
Creating holes within soil’s layer
can mix it up and add some air
which helps break-down organic waste
and drain the rain in record haste.
Organic matter, we conclude
provides the worms with all their food.
Consuming soil is what they do.
Excreting lots of earthworm poo.
These squiggly clumps of mud have passed
through worm’s insides. They’re called a cast.
Those casts make soil a better place
so plants grow at a faster pace.
Without the worms, the soil would not
stay very clean and start to rot.
The earthworms all have key careers
as eco-system engineers.
Celia Berrell
Yesterday
I was a golden dragon
The kiss of grasses brushed my ankles
And then I rose into the sky
Where I cavorted at first
Then drifted
brushing the clouds,
a wondrous lilting shape that those below
beheld with awe.
Golden and crimson I lapped the world
like a god commanding
everything
and everyone
all things revolved around me
I owned the day
Shattered it with my beauty
And my gigantic roar.
Today
yesterday was a dream
and now I am but a mere child
my mother standing over me
with her many demands
I must obey.
Dianne Bates
A Girl’s Head
(after the poem, ‘A Boy’s Head’ by Miroslav Holub)
In it there is a dream
that was started
before she was born,
and there is a globe
with hemispheres
which shall be happy.
There is her own spacecraft,
a chosen dress
and pictures of her friends.
There are shining rings
and a maze of mirrors.
There is a diary
for surprise occasions.
There is a horse springing hooves
across the sky.
There is a sea
that tides and swells
and cannot be mapped.
There is untold hope
in that no equation exactly
fits a head.
Katherine Gallagher
(from Poetry Street 3 (Sale & Orme, 1991),
Dreams
I wish my warm and cosy dreams
would stay inside my head
Instead of floating off for good
when I get out of bed.
I’d like to put them in a box,
all those I want to keep,
then choose the one I want at night
before I go to sleep.
Jenny Erlanger
Australian Children’s Poetry 