We went for a walk,
just Nan, Pop and me,
and found lots of treasure
washed up by the sea.
Nan found a rock crab
alone on the sand.
It tickled and wriggled
around in my hand.
I found a treasure
beneath the sea grass;
a smooth-as-silk
wave-polished piece of green glass.
But Pop said his treasure
was the best you would see:
he crawled under the jetty
and there he found me!
We blow them in streams
across the yard,
some small and marble-sized,
others as big as baseballs.
Every bubble iridescent,
a perfect world of its own,
mirroring grass, sky,
occasionally our faces.
Bubbles glinting with sunlight
swirl skyward or
float to the ground.
Each one
a little miracle
before it pops.
Sudden bursts of gold,
Sweeping colour bold,
By rivers, by roads, in country and town,
In farms and gardens, the wattle’s the crown.
Of the end of the winter, beginning of spring,
The blooming of wattle will sing and sing
Of birds in their nests and the warm days to hand,
For the wattle is blooming across the land.
Bought by a beneficent buccaneer
bunches of broccoli
bound through the air
into a basin of boiling water.
They balanced the content of Vitamin B
in the body of the buccaneer’s
burgeoning daughter.
Alix Said: I thought this was a bit of a challenge. At first look, the four “b” words had nothing in common. I decided to look up what vitamins are associated with broccoli and discovered that Vitamin B was one. Very convenient. Apart from being convenient with regard to the poem, as far as I understand, Vitamin B helps nerve cells and DNA to grow, and so, it was quite appropriate to use with “burgeoning daughter”.
Death on the High Seas
Dastardly –
that’s me. Buccaneer
from my head
to peg leg
Cutlass poised, victim green with
fear of what will come
Time balanced
on a honed knife edge
descending
like rain to
a basin. Your end is nigh
broccoli, hold still
Nadine Cranenburgh
A basin of broccoli served up for tea
Is not what a young buccaneer wants to see.
His diet should be balanced when pillaging ships,
But he’d much prefer ice cream and lots of hot chips.
When pelicans are flying low,
With open beaks they say “Hello”
To any fish they gladly see
That could provide a tasty tea,
For like a furry flippered seal,
They do enjoy a fishy meal.
So after taking time to greet,
These hungry birds prepare to eat,
(While under beaks, there hangs a store
For extra, should they want some more).
Then up they rise to sail the sky:
Their beaks too full to say “Goodbye”!
Monty says: I wanted to get both greetings and goodbyes into a single poem, but the result promised to be rather long. I tried using a short telephone call for content, but wasn’t satisfied with the outcome, so contrived a brief encounter of familiar creatures at the seaside.
A frog lives in our garden
in a pond beneath the tree.
I hear it croak at bedtime
as it says ‘goodnight’ to me.
A frog lives by our back door
on a post below the light.
I sneak outside to say ‘hello’
because it’s only there at night.
A frog lives in our laundry
in the corner of the wall.
I check when I come back inside
to make sure it didn’t fall.
A frog lives in our kitchen
in the space behind the sink.
It freezes in the torchlight
when I get myself a drink.
A frog lives in our bathroom
and I don’t know what to do
because it isn’t where it should be.
Yuk! It’s swimming in the loo!
My mum comes in the bathroom,
plants a kiss upon my head.
‘The frogs are fine just where they are
but you should be in bed!’
Kristin Says: A few years ago, when I was travelling around northern Australia with my family, I was amazed by all the places where we saw frogs. We saw a tiny frog on the mirror in the girls’ toilets at a caravan park. We saw an even tinier frog siting behind the cold-water tap on the sink. And we saw a huge frog hiding under the toilet seat. I wanted to tell people about all these amazing places you could find frogs, so I decided to write a frog poem. To make my poem more interesting I developed a story about a child who has lots of frogs in her (or his) house. I pretended I was the child, and I was up at night, creeping around my house with a torch looking for the frogs. This is the poem I wrote.
Barnaby’s clearly in love with my sister,
He cannot resist her.
I’ve seen how he’s kissed her.
She’s only been gone for a day but he’s missed her.
It’s time for a family chat.
Needless to say, my proposed intervention
will cause more dissension
than I care to mention
but I am the one who deserves the attention
since Barnaby’s my freaking cat.
With the eye in the back of his head
he sees them coming —
eight-year-old breakers,
baby-hard, baby-soft.
Their elegant space-machine
could swallow him,
drown him once and for all
in a dish of air.
They are the masters —
skills bred in the bone.
He freezes
as they expect
though a voice inside him squeaks
I . ..Words cut his tongue,
weigh in his mind
like a bruise.
Published in Them & Us, Bodley Head, 1993
Katherine Says: The poetry prompt “HELP” reminded me of occasions in schools and elsewhere when I’ve come up against bullying.
Australian Children’s Poetry 