Start March with a splash – for SEA WEEK!
Send your poetic inspirations to Linda Davidson:
Date prompts include:
Picture Prompt:
AQUARIUM by Kaushani Mufti
The whoosh of the wind has lifted its sail.
It flips and flaps and flicks its tail.
My kit-packet kite is pecking the sky,
jigging and jagging, higher and higher!
Soaring in circles – a marvellous thing!
I am the keeper.
I hold the string.
Oops, it’s in a tree…
Image from Pixabay
Welcome 2026!
We hope that you’ve had a lovely holiday season and are ready for some new beginnings.
Looking forward to receiving your poetic creations, so email them to me, Linda Davidson (your new ACP Administrator), at:
Date prompts:
Picture prompt:
This is the first panel of a large artwork titled TIME TO GROW by Sharon Davson
THE PLASTIC PACIFIC
How much plastic is in the sea?
Fifty-one trillion pieces!
Fifty-one trillion ways to kill
all our ocean species.
Choking, snarling, killingwhales, turtles, and fish;
unless we stop dumping toxic trash
our oceans will diminish.
OTTER SNOT
Does
an otter
have snot
or not?
Whether or not
an otter has
snot,
I know
not.
James Aitchison
How can one describe them?
Thousands of little bays.
We’re on the Royal Mail boat.
It only runs two days.
Little coves with just one house,
they must love this isolation.
The boat drops in to leave them goods,
like a train at every station.
Rugged hills with ferns to cover,
I wonder how folk live.
Plenty of fish and wildlife
They’re hardy to survive.
This way of life is not for me,
I cannot live on just beauty,
without the comforts of my place.
I need to see a friendly face.
(In response to prompt #2 What’s Outside Your Window?)
A polar bear waved to me
and called a loud “hello”,
as he floated past eating fish
on a jolly big ice floe.
Penguins flapped their flippers,
a humpback slapped its tail,
and I waved back with all my might
as onward I did sail…
In response to the Winter Waves prompt
Green
Our fast green car
Green world
Stomach churning
Head spinning
Spinning
The world turning
Upside down
Downside up
Around and around
Wheels rolling
Streets passing
Blurred buildings
Blurred faces
Blur blur blur
Ur…
Dad, stop!
I’m going to throw …
Too late.
The animals have hairy fur.
The birds have got their feathers.
These keep their bodies warm enough
throughout the chilly weather.
The fibres in those fluffy coats
criss-cross to form some air-holes
that can’t escape or waft away
because of all the hair-folds.
Their skin gives off some body-warmth.
Just like a radiator.
Their fluffy coats help keep that heat
as thermal insulators.
The warm air’s trapped inside the fur
to shield them from the outside.
The way that blankets on a bed
are cosy on the inside.
But if that fluffy coat gets wet
those air-holes fill with water.
Their body’s warmth escapes as that
wet coat’s a heat conductor.
The soggy fur clings to their skin.
No longer insulated.
And water makes their body cold
as it’s evaporated.
Any fluffy animal will
shake that water well away.
So if your puppy’s had a swim …
Watch-out for all that water spray!
Frangipani
Grows, guerilla-planted, by the footpath.
How does a stick thrust
Into the dirt
Just grow?
Kicking into life,
Leaning into light,
Making the most of
Night rain,
Of morning dew.
Putting down roots
Quietly
Reaching down to grasp
Soil,
To hold the earth steadily
Until
Velvet furls of leaf appear,
Waking now above, as below.
We cannot see or hear them,
yet we know when each arrives.
We love them, hate or fear them
as we stumble through our lives.
They fire away like crazy
somewhere deep inside our brain.
They prod us when we’re lazy,
get us back on track again.
They don’t ask for permission
from the moment that we wake
to set out on their mission
to control the moves we make.
It may not live an hour
as its life is pretty short
but there’s no denying the power
of a solitary thought.
Jenny says: I have always been fascinated by the capacity of a seemingly immaterial thought to create physical or emotional responses in human beings.
Australian Children’s Poetry 