THE KOALAS COME BACK
One by one you’ll see them come back
And climb to the top of the tree,
Those cuddly koalas we love,
They’ll come home — just you wait and see!
Some nursed back to health by humans,
So they can be happy and free.
It might take a little more time
Till the bush comes to life anew,
But once all those juicy leaves grow
Koalas have something to chew.
Then we’ll say, “Welcome home, Blinky!
We’ve saved a big cuddle for you!”
Australian bushfires
They say the smoke has reached Chile.
Not just the smoke from our blazing forests,
But the smoke from lost fireys and townsfolk,
And thousands oft homes,
And five hundred million wild animals,
And cattle and sheep and bold horses
Burned alive in once-lush paddocks.
They say the smoke is toxic. It is not.
It is sacred.
AN AUSSIE BUSH SUMMER
Golden dust veils the scalding sunset,
And eucalyptus leaves droop weary.
Heat strangles each breeze at birth,
And all the bush is quiet and eerie.
A lonely road wanders lost between
the fences; some cattle, black and still.
Lost interest in the grass —
And waiting for that dry creek to fill.
Nightfall claims the leavings of the day,
And branches reach out long and shady.
The country’s parched and breathless,
Till once more, spring steps like a lady.
Prickly bindi-eyes sting my feet
when on the summer grass I walk.
In everyone’s backyard I’ll meet
Prickly bindi-eyes!
And even when tip-toed I stalk,
hoping their menace I can cheat,
I fail — and you can hear my squawk!
Bindi-eyes love the summer heat,
And I — I’d need eyes like a hawk
To avoid them in ev’ry street —
Prickly bindi-eyes!
Season’s greetings — but which season?
Bush fires start much earlier now.
When the country’s devastated,
What joy will light the Christmas hour?
Stumps of houses, chimneys blackened,
Nowhere for Santa Claus to stop!
No trees this year decked with tinsel,
They’re just a charred and cheerless crop.
With all our presents wrapped in dust,
And no grass to feed the reindeer,
I hate to think of Christmas morn;
It will get worse year after year!
When climate change changes Christmas,
No Santa through the sky will dash.
Yes, we’ll still have our white Christmas —
But a Christmas all white with ash.
HOPE
Hope is the tiny flame
That flickers inside us all.
The flame that burns brightest
In times of fear and defeat.
Hope is the thread
That binds our hearts and souls.
Hope can be seen in the vast ocean;
The highest mountain;
The valley green;
The flowers bursting new in spring.
Hope is inside us all;
Hope is all around us.
All we have to do is touch it
And hope will do the rest.
On the eleventh hour
Of the eleventh day
Of the eleventh month,
1918, the guns fell silent.
World War One,
The war to end all wars,
Was over.
Lest we forget, in Flanders fields,
The poppies grew blood red,
When Aussie boys, far from their homes,
Were number’d ’mongst the dead.
They came from farms where red gums grew,
From ’neath the Southern Cross;
No friendly sun, no magpie’s cry,
Would ever mark their loss.
In ev’ry town, in ev’ry park,
Their solemn statues stand.
Lest we forget those brave young men
Whose honour shaped our land.
Australian Children’s Poetry 