Shoes always come in pairs,
but pears don’t come in shoes.
And I know that my nose knows
how to make ah-choooooos.
Whales don’t come from Wales,
is it rite or is it right?
And who can tell the difference
between quiet or quite?
Angle grinders not ankle grinders,
it’s so easy to make a slip—
because English is really funny
and tries to make you trip.
I dreamed one day I’d journey
over the sea to Skye,
and I did, on a modern ferry,
to where the crags reach high.
Like Bonnie Prince Charlie himself,
I had the hills to climb,
where songs and daring legends
were born in the mists of time.
I hear a hip and hop,
it’s very, very near,
and I know who it is —
he comes this time of year.
I’ve never ever seen him
as he hastens here and there;
the Easter Bunny’s hiding eggs
and he won’t tell us where.
He puts them under bushes,
and up in trees somewhere,
but my friends and I will find them
and we’ll have lots to share!
Photo by Alexas Fotos
Here 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?
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.
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.
From 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.
On 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.
I should have sent some flowers,
I should have sent a card,
but then I got so busy
and it was all too hard!
So I cut some nice red roses
at next door’s in the dark,
and added lots of other things
growing in the park.
It made a lovely gift
and didn’t cost a cent.
Isn’t it the thought that counts
and not how much I spent?
Australian Children’s Poetry 