I’m very pleased to report that a poem of mine for children, Paddock Life, has won third prize(poetry category) in well-known children’s poet Jackie Hosking’s annual Poetry and Stories in Verse Competition, the results of which have just been announced!
Congratulations to all the prize-winners and highly commendeds, and many thanks to Jackie for running the comp and always supporting poetry for children!
Below is my poem. Hope you enjoy.
Paddock life
by Sophie Masson
Magpie
She has all the morning alive in her throat,
Silvering the air with a fresh stream of notes,
She’s dressed for a show in her black and her white,
And her song will remain even when she takes flight.
Spiders
The spiders spin their silk all over the place
Patiently weaving fine patterns of lace,
Turning grass clumps to cities and fences to art,
As they work and they wait and they prowl and they dart.
Kangaroo
Over the fence, look! There he goes,
That famous acrobat striking a pose!
Up on two legs, then down on four,
And with the tail, he adds one more.
Blue tongue lizard
From his home in a log the blue tongue clumps out
Like a mini dinosaur he stomps and stalks about,
His tongue flicking in
His tongue flicking out.
Cattle
Knee deep in grass, in the bright golden day,
The cattle are making their very slow way
Down to the dam where they’ll drink and they’ll chew
And they’ll stare and they’ll dream the whole day through.
Feathers of the Firebird 
Well done Sophie!
Wendy Blaxland
writer
http://www.wendyblaxland.com http://www.blaxlandanddaughter.com
19 Lisa Valley Close Wahroonga NSW 2076 AUSTRALIA ph +61 02 9489 4955, m 0411 071 273
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AFTER YESTERDAYâS HAILSTORM
Inside our freezer the hailstone evidence is frozen on a plate,
fat splats of jagged ice the storm hurled in its play
then dropped, to fall straight down
on our small home below.
I find an outside light smashed to silvery fragments,
winking like sly knives hidden in the grass;
the ground a latticed mat of curved gum leaves, jacaranda lace,
flat frangipani leaves welling white gum-tears.
Swimming in the lightness of the pool
I twirl and whirl to gather the wrack:
fistfuls of gumnuts, dead twigs,
whippy sappy branchlets
that were green and growing yesterday.
Yet the pool is soft and warm, cupped full of milky green;
the sun shines on the bright glass shards winking like water,
and a honey-eater arrows through the bougainvillea thorns
to taste the nectar of a red grevillea bloom.
The rain-washed air is drenched
with the scent of a thousand petals scattered
from our laden mock orange trees,
as if the flowers had wept,
glad brides of the hail.
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Thanks, Wendy!
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