They say my words are quite absurd,
my poems most preposterous,
my rhymes are poor, my rhythms wild,
my metre’s all quite monstrous.
But I don’t care what they say,
one day I will be prosperous,
because I am the world’s only
poetic rhinoceros.
Category Archives: Australian children’s poetry
Have You Ever? by Warren Cox
Leave a commentHave you ever seen a turtle swimming with a whale?
Have you ever seen an elephant dancing with a snail?
Have you ever seen a grasshopper hopping with a frog?
Or a big fat walrus barking like a dog?
Have you ever seen a wagtail without a tail to wag?
Have you ever seen a hippo and a rhino playing tag?
Have you ever seen a kookaburra eating Christmas cake?
Or a lion and a tiger, laughing at a snake?
Have you ever seen a billy goat flying through the air?
Have you ever seen an alligator sitting on a chair?
Have you ever seen a goldfish splashing in your pool?
Or a baa baa black sheep on its way to school?
Have you ever seen an emu nesting in a tree?
Have you ever seen a butterfly bathing with a bee?
Have you ever seen a panda bear sliding on a sled?
Or a big bad wolf standing on its head?
Have you ever seen a rooster slipping down a slide?
Have you ever seen a peacock at the sea-side?
Have you ever seen a kitten give a puppy dog a hug?
Or a huge great dane shaking paws with a pug?
Have you ever seen a monkey dressed up like a clown
Have you ever seen a kangaroo hanging upside down?
Have you ever seen a rabbit thumb its nose at a fox
Or a two humped camel with its head inside a box
If you’ve never watched a wombat make dinner for a goat,
or a rooster and a rabbit drinking coffee on a boat.
If you’ve never seen a turkey doing ballet with a duck,
then I’ve got to say, “Dear children, you are just plain out of luck.”
The Colour of Life by Toni Newell
Leave a commentGreen strokes on paper
Underneath the blue
Depicting a rain forest
Greens of different hue.
Nature’s bountiful
Beautiful and clean
The foundation of life
And very often green.
Green symbolizes life
Producing oxygen
Which keeps us all alive
The world and mortal men.
Green’s pleasant to the eye
Calming and free
Covering mountains,
Shimmering from a tree.
The colour green’s alive
It’s vibrant and lush
And beautifully captured
By strokes with a brush.
Photo by Pixabay
My River of Dreams by James Aitchison
Leave a commentHere is where I’d like to float,
in my very own white boat.
I’d slowly rock from side to side,
while sleeping on the gentle tide.
Sometimes I’d sail upstream in style,
and that would make life so worthwhile.
I’d catch some fish to cook each day,
and leave my troubles far away.
Teacher’s note: This poem could invite a class discussion about why people love their boats and rivers. What dreams do students have about a “dream” escape?
Time and Tide by James Aitchison
Leave a commentThe 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.
Nature’s Knitting by James Aitchison
Leave a commentHowling 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 by Warren Cox
Leave a commenta 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
The Poetic Opossum by James Aitchison
Leave a commentThere 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.
The Big Water by James Aitchison
Leave a commentFrom the foot of Peppercorn Hill
I flow, from a boggy heath in
the Snowy;
I journey by Canberra,
then map my mighty course
past Gundagai and Wagga,
to where the Murray waits.
My river’s tale is fraught
with a dozen deadly floods,
yet my relentless waters
bless Riverina farms.
Since the dawn of time I’ve been
Australia’s Big Water —
the Murrumbidgee River,
the life source of my land.
Teacher’s note: The Murrumbidgee is Australia’s second longest river, edging the Darling into third place by a few kilometres. “Murrumbidgee”, in Wiradjuri language, means “Big Water”. The photograph shows the Murrumbidgee at Wagga Wagga.
The Tale of Max McKnight by James Aitchison
Leave a commentOn his trampoline jumps Max McKnight
but he sails too high!
He’s snapped up by an eagle in flight
passing by.
Thwarted, the eagle can’t swallow the boy
in one go,
so it opens its beak and drops poor Max like a toy
into his backyard below.
Teacher’s note: This experimental poem reduces the line-length of a sonnet from the traditional iambic pentameter, while preserving a typical rhyme-scheme.
Australian Children’s Poetry 