Patrick Platypus’s
Work was arduous
For he was trying to remove a pumpkin
From his hole where it had sunken.
He asked help from Myrtle the turtle
And her face went really purple
When she pushed and prodded
But her effort was dogged
And together they moved the pumpkin
From his hole where it had sunken.
Wheels Song
I don’t know why I’ve got feet
when I could have had wheels,
for wheels go so much faster.
Imagine me flying down our street
not in my trainers or boots
but on wheels, with my ghetto-blaster.
Imagine people turning to stare
and all telling me to slow down
before I caused a disaster.
Imagine me gliding off into space
with a quick little nod to the Moon,
then simply going straight past her. . .
Published in Through a Window, Longman, 1995
A Halloween party was held near the creek.
Preparing the costumes took almost a week.
Several koalas in purple were cloaked.
A curled up echidna was prodded and poked
into a hollowed out pumpkin shell, where
she peacefully slept and was quite unaware
that first prize went to platypus dressed in his skin.
No costume was needed for this guy to win.
My mind is muddled, I feel befuddled,
bewildered and confused.
I think the space inside my brain
has been completely used.
There’s no room left for algebra,
or history or dates,
So I’ll be marching out of school,
please open up the gates.
What’s that you say? You’ll ring my mum?
You’ll call my dad as well?
Well, silly me, there seems to be
some room left in there still.
I guess I’ll stay and learn some more
until the final bell.
The bottle looked lost as it lay on the sand.
Perhaps it had fallen from somebody’s hand.
It seemed to be empty, but still had its lid
Whoever had dropped it must know that they did.
Or had it been lost from the deck of a boat,
With air trapped inside having helped it to float,
Until borne by the waves and washed up by the tide
It was left on the beach at the end of its ride?
Still, no one had claimed it. The bottle was mine!
It looked to have once held some cider or wine.
I bent down and grasped it, then held it up high
To check if inside it was thoroughly dry.
I found it not empty as first I had thought,
But rather, inside was a note of some sort!
I opened and read what was written within:
“Please take this old bottle and throw in the bin.”
Monty says: While working on this poem for the bottle prompt a second poem using a different approach to the same prompt was conceived.
Cuttle Wish
Cuttlefish arms are in the place
where most of us would have a face.
Front-on they look like elephants
with lots and lots of tiny trunks.
Their skin can change its colouring
to make their bodies blend right in.
Their eyes have slits like wavy lines
instead of pupils round like mine.
Safe in their see-through eggy shell
Cuttlefish babies see quite well.
Before they’re old enough to hatch
they’ve seen the food they wish to catch!
Celia said: At birth, human babies have blurry vision. It takes a while to master how to focus on different things. In contrast, a cuttlefish’s eyes are fully developed before they hatch from their see-through egg. Just imagine being able to see all the food you want eat floating by … but you can’t get to it! Is that like having a blurred appetite?
My class is so lucky.
This term we’re learning about life cycles,
so my teacher brought in some tadpoles-
three big black commas
swimming around in a plastic aquarium
right beside our desks.
We named them
Freddo,
Kermit
and Spot.
Freddo was the first to grow
stumps
legs
more legs
then his tail shrunk
until his body was a fat full stop.
‘But what do we do with our frog?’
asked Mrs Chugg with a frown.
My hand shot up quicker than a speeding mosquito.
‘I’ve got a pond!’
So, she poked some holes in a butter tub
and sent Freddo home with me.
‘Lucky duck,’ said Ben.
I carried my precious passenger
down the street
around the back
then knelt beside our weedy pond
and gently tipped him in.
Freddo swam to a lily pad
half scrambled on and gazed around
at the water
reeds
insects
and grassy bank
before frog-kicking into the murky depths.
Compared to Kermit and Spot
with their four plastic walls,
I’d say he’s pretty lucky.
For Vincent Van Gough’s ‘The Starry, Starry Night’
Outlines crash into swirls
Miss Del Amico asks, what do you see?
Is that a sky of blue curls?
Outlines crash into swirls
Time to dive for some pearls
Will I find this painting’s key?
Outlines crash into swirls
Miss Del Amico asks, what do you see ?
My father loved the stars
In another life,
permitted education,
his facility with numbers
might have made him
a famous astronomer
instead of an accountant
See that bright one?
That’s Beetle-juice
I remember him telling
Yes, I’d say meekly
wishing to please
But I couldn’t of course
It was all just fuzzy blobs
See that milkbar on the corner?
No I said. Didn’t want to be sent
somewhere I couldn’t see
Stupid child! they thought
It never occurred to them
that I really couldn’t see.
So on my seventh birthday
a bicycle purple painted,
with Virginia
in gold down the crossbar
the most beautiful bike ever seen
I was terrified
to ride it, I couldn’t see
where I was going,
what was in front
I walked it to school
to Brownies after school
to have it admired,
to show it off
but I couldn’t actually ride it.
Six months later
my myopia finally spotted by a teacher
I learned to ride with my new glasses
I was never very good
never enthusiastic
never worthy of the bike’s beauty
The skill now long forgotten
Virginia said: I was myopic (short sighted) from birth, but no one realised until a teacher called my parents when I was seven. I didn’t know of course – that’s just how the world was – it didn’t occur to me that it might look different to different people. After I got glasses I was fine – but never really confident riding a bike, however beautiful the bike was. Now I’m old. When they removed the cataracts from my eyes, they fixed the myopia as well, so no more glasses! There are some things I miss though, especially the pattern of circles of light through a dense leaf canopy. But now I can see the birds instead. I’ll never go back to bike riding though.
I first wrote this poem in response to a prompt on another poetry site, Silver Birch Press. The prompt was ‘learning to ride a bike’. It will fit into my autobiography in verse (not yet published) A Myopic’s Vision.
Certainly not. You’re more likely to drown
if you swim under skies that are murky and brown.
And what’s that fence here for? Who cares if it’s green.
I’m more concerned with its ungainly lean
and its reason for being here. Something’s not right.
It belongs somewhere else (and would look better white) –
which prompts me to wonder just where it has been.
Did it come in a storm? What’s it all mean?
Blue bottles on beaches don’t appeal either,
glass ones or stinging ones. I insist neither
of these little dangers should ever be seen
on a beach where I swim; I’m a stickler for “clean”.
And one other thing: there’s no one else here;
I like to know that a life-guard is near.
That settles the matter. I wouldn’t go in.
I’d choose somewhere else for my holiday swim.
But if you’re inspired by your re-arranged mess
the outcome, I’d say, is anyone’s guess.
Australian Children’s Poetry 