I say, have you seen him?
You know who I mean,
That boy at the back of the class.
He hides in the shadows,
He sits all alone.
Don’t look! You’ll see through him like glass.
He watches the others,
He says not a word,
Our teacher walks by him each day.
You feel his eyes on you
But when you look round
He seems to have faded away.
I swear I once saw him,
Or perhaps I was wrong,
Was he just an illusion or trick?
Don’t try to use mirrors
Or catch him by spying
He’ll disappear faster than quick.
But when we all leave
For recess or lunch
He prowls all over the place.
He riffles our things
And hunts through our desks
But of him, he’ll not leave a trace.
You must know his name,
That boy at the back,
I think someone said his name’s John.
Or did they say Peter,
Or Stephen, or Paul?
Forget it. It’s too late. He’s gone
Ken Smith
Ken is a retired teacher who runs a local writers’ group in his home town of Denmark on the south coast of Western Australia.
garden bench
an old black cat
waits patiently
morning mist
beads drowsy damsel
in condensation
noontide sun
shrinks water splash through
evaporation
Autumn leaves
Washed up with the jetsam
On the beach
soccer pitch
the border collie running
in circles
(Tristan won an international children’s haiku competition in 2018)
If you could catch the full moon
and hold it in your hand,
would you want to keep it
for ‘moonlight-on-demand’?
Or would you throw it back again
and leave it in the sky
for everyone to marvel at
and do some dreaming by?
Surprise Egg
Scritch scritch!
Scratch scratch!
This little egg’s about to hatch!
Quack quack!
Duck duck!
She’s made of chocolate!
What sweet luck!
Kylie Covark
Easter
I cross the road to Molly’s farm.
There is a sign nailed to a post:
Eggs for sale.
I buy a dozen.
I hear a rooster crow.
On the way home I trip and fall.
One egg is cracked and broken,
The others are saved.
On Sunday we celebrate Easter;
Soft boiled eggs for breakfast.
I see the Easter bunny has visited too!
Dark chocolate is my passion.
Life is good.
Louise McCarthy
THE EASTER EGG TREE
Away in a corner
where nobody goes,
there is a secret
that nobody knows.
Each year at Easter
Mum, Dad and me,
we go to visit
the Easter egg tree.
Has that Easter bunny
used his hiding-place?
We search in the branches,
and all round the base.
He’s hopped through the paddocks
to our special tree
to leave lots of eggs there
for Mum, Dad and me.
Eggs red and yellow,
eggs blue and green;
that’s how we know
Easter bunny has been.
Yes, each year at Easter
Mum, Dad and me,
find Easter eggs in
the Easter egg tree.
This is a true story! I wrote the poem for my daughter. When she was
small we used to stay in the country each Easter – Jaz.
Australian Children’s Poetry 