Good Morning,
This fortnight we are looking at Acrostic Poetry. This is a form of poetry often taught in schools.
Below is a description and a simple example.
As we head towards Easter perhaps you could write about Easter themes?
Send your poems into
poemoftheday.jaxton@gmail.com
Regards
Jeanie
“The creative adult is the child who survived.” — Ursula Leguin
(Best known for her tales of Science Fiction and Fantasy)
A silver trail was left behind
It shimmered in the sun
No sign of its maker,
Only a clue.
I curiously followed the trail,
Before me was an agapanthus,
Bearing beautiful umbels of blue
And succulent long green leaves.
I parted them in search of
The mysterious creator.
Deep within the plant I found,
Asleep and securely attached,
A snail,
The architect of the silver trail.
Once upon a time in a used car yard,
There was a Mazda named Henry,
His duco was bright red,
Which bore several scars
Incurred by previous owners.
Henry was sad because
He’d been there for several months,
And had lost many friends over time.
Two silver Nissans were parked on either side,
One was called Fred and the other Mary,
Henry had made their acquaintance,
He seemed to get on with them well,
His only fear, that they too would leave.
Henry desperately wanted to find a new home
With a family who’d love and care for him.
Every morning he would wake up
With the hope he would be the chosen one,
Every night he’d fall asleep disappointed.
This particular morning, Henry spotted
A nice young couple approaching the yard,
He honked his horn in order to get their attention,
“You know you’re not allowed to do that,” said Fred
But Mary said, “It’s alright Fred, they’ll see us too,
Who would you choose if it was you?
A red car with scratches or a car almost new?”
Henry’s eyes lowered; he knew it was true.
The couple ventured over and looked at Mary,
Then bypassed Henry to inspect Fred,
But much to Mary and Fred’s extreme dread,
They paused at Henry whose duco was red.
They stroked his panels and tapped his bonnet,
This little Mazda was within their budget.
Half an hour later they appeared again,
With a smile on their face and keys in a hand,
Henry was so happy he could hardly contain,
The excitement he felt to be owned once again.
I carried a tree
through the Underground.
It was hard. At first,
people scarcely noticed me
and the oak I was lugging
along the platforms –
heavier than a suitcase
and difficult to balance.
We threaded through corridors,
changing lines: up and down stairs,
escalators, and for a moment
I imagined everyone on the planet
taking turns
to carry a tree as daily rite.
A few people asked
Why a tree?
I said it was for my own
edification –
a tree always
has something to teach.
Sharp gusts
whirred through the corridors
rustling the branches
as I hurried on
past the sweepers
picking up rubbish, scraps of paper.
Be sure to take the tree
with you, they said.
Don’t worry, I’m taking it
to my garden,
the start of a forest.
When people stared,
Relax, I said,
it‘s a tree, not a gun.
©Katherine Gallagher
The Year of the Tree was chosen by Carol Rumens for the ‘Poem of the Week’ Guardian blog in November, 2012
Published in Carnival Edge: New & Selected Poems (Arc Publications, 2010)
How can I write
a poem that won’t rhyme?
Aren’t poems meant
To rhyme all the time?
If words don’t rhyme,
is it still a poem?
On second thoughts —
My job’d be easy!
THE MONUMENT TREE
Copyright 1992
J R Poulter
PART 1
I don’t remember the first
whispers of life
as I lay
warm in the earth.
I don’t recall
the gentle uncurling.
The first reality
for me was light
Breaking over me as I broke free
of the earth that covered.
The night
was cool
and the dew
washed me of the stains of birth
that clung to me.
My roots pushed deeper,
wider,
feeling my way down
even as I reached out
and up.
There were others like me
shaded by greater trees.
Fire,
frost
And time
Took most of them.
Earthdark people came,
Leaning their shelters
against my slenderness.
They came and went
And came again,
Again,
Again –
Never leaving any trace –
Gliding across the landscape
Brief as windblown showdows
across a face.
A young man
Took
a straight, strong limb –
I bled.
But there was healing.
The young man made a thing of blood
And killed
one of his kind.
The young man fled.
The dead man lay between my roots.
I held him till he blended
into me.
Other men came.
The shadow people passed
like the night wind’s breath on grass
into the distant dark.
They came back but sometimes
in silence,
And only to steal their own.
The others came and came, like the fire in the sky
And with a sound like thunder.
PART 2
There was a change,
But not of seasons
or the cycles of life.
My leaves no longer brushed against my kind.
The murmlings of the stream
and all its creatures – gone.
The land was naked in the sun.
Strange animals moved slow
and heavy
Over,
over,
over,
over it.
I was strong now,
and tall.
But generations of my seed
were trodden down,
cut down,
Or left
like skeletons
to cry against a harsh horizon.
I longed for the shy, quiet creatures,
that had clung to me,
or grazed and slumbered in my shade.
They came not often now
and flitted in fear
like haunted things.
Once
the shadow people
came crying –
running and huddling by me.
The others followed fast
four feet instead of two,
loud,
harsh
voices,
sudden fire!
The shadow people fell.
Their blood,
their being
passed slowly
back into the earth,
into me.
The others built fences
to keep out
to keep in.
They lived by me.
And died.
Thin babies,
Frightened women,
And men,
who looked across fences
into wilderness
with eyes their wives didn’t see,
and took what their wives didn’t know.
So came another people
who fences could not hold
and the wilderness did not own.
The fences grew
like webs,
Grasping
and
Grasping.
I was become gnarled
and towering
with the wind in my arms.
The possums
who had never really
left,
came back to nest
in my hollows –
and the birds.
One evening
roving lights
searched over the hills.
The possum mother foraged,
but did not return.
I felt the little ones’ cries,
then the stillness
in the heart of me.
The others hunched their buildings
closer,
shutting out
and shutting in.
Once
they came and sang,
Strained and straight
as picket fences.
They nailed a plaque to me
and nodded.
A child of their children, grown tall
took the plaque for his bower.
It left a symetrical scar
on the wilderness of me.
The buildings vied
to touch the clouds
and shadowed me.
A careful garden at my feed
flourished like a desert flower
and went –
fraggled beneath
rough feet.
Only the vagabond birds
found refugee with me
and the strange,
stray animals
that only cities breed.
Another young man came
out of the buildings
With shadow
across his face.
His eyes looked into me
Till the sun set behind me and
Burned me into his soul.
That night
earth, fire and water
fought!
White fire
split earth and heaven!
The tree was broken
to its heart –
An obstruction for the others
that must go.
The young man came and took the tree –
the tree that was beautiful.
Out of the tree
the young man, who belonged to no one,
shaped and formed
his cry.
From out of twisted limbs and trunk,
A man of earth and fire
came crying!
From the roots
of his entrapment
He cried.
He cried out!
He cried out,
from the darkness that held him,
into the light!
And the tree was beautiful.
Australian Children’s Poetry 