The waves roll in, cunning waves
and hungry;
the stone stacks wonder when
they too will fall.
Headlands brace themselves
against the wild tide,
and, in time, the ocean
will devour the shore.
Teacher’s note: The Twelve Apostles are limestone stacks off the shore near Port Campbell, Victoria. The harsh waves from the Southern Ocean slowly erode the soft limestone in the cliffs to form caves, which later become arches that eventually collapse leaving up to fifty-metre high stacks.
Howling winds
from raging seas,
relentless, wild,
distort the trees.
Stunted growth
in salty air,
in sandy soil,
forlorn and bare.
Yet even here
we find beauty,
in harsh and tangled
symmetry.
a poem can be quite funny
a poem can be quite sad
some poems are really sensible
while others are quite mad
some are rather silly
designed to fashion laughs
with talk of roosters ducks and geese
or large long necked giraffes
but poems can tell a story
not just be rhyming word
a poem can make your heart take flight
on strong emotions stirred
a poem can give you pleasure
wonderous and sublime
of which there is no measure
take you to another time
and poems belong to everyone
just follow where they lead
turn the page and there they are
in thought word and deed
for poetry is ancient
a timeless limitless cloak
of thoughts and feelings infinite
as old as language spoke
There was an opossum
who wrote an opoem.
“O! look what I’ve done,”
the opossum opined.
At the oasis or
down by the ocean,
Opossum’s opoem
received an ovation.
Was it opossible
for an opossum
to write an opoem?
Oh yes, it owas!
Teacher’s note: Opossums are native to North and South America, while possums are native to Australia.
Australian Children’s Poetry 