As Dusk Falls

The Beauty Of This Island

An Artist In Space

My young friend, the creative and talented Louis, gave me a list of words to write into a poem. His words are in bold and this poem is for him...

An Artist In Space

Wrapped in my space suit,

I am a Panda Picasso,

trying to sketch planet earth with my pencil.

So far, I'm doing a pretty good job.

Things look different up here than they do on the map:

Indonesia is a small bird bathing in the sea.

Italy doesn't look like a boot when it's upside down;

it is more like an alligator opening its great jaw.

Scandinavia is a piece of cheese on a fork.

That's pretty funny, I think,

and when I laugh,

my breath rushes past my ears

like a red tiger's roar.

There is no room for a lunchbox up here.

Instead I suck on sugar cubes

like a horse after a race.

Sometimes the whole of space

looks at me and twinkles a question:

"What?"

- as if I have the answer,

as if I represent all the people who ever lived

and can reply for us all.

Apart from the sugar cubes, and my pencil,

the only things I carry with me are words.

Weightless, unaffected by gravity, and very satisfying,

I nibble on them whenever I'm hungry.

My favourite one today is "flabbergasted".

And so I sing it out into space -

"Flabbergasted!"

- an answer to the question,

with a million tiny answers inside it

like stars packed into the galaxy's pocket.

Lottie Loves Cake

My young friend, the magical and creative Lottie, gave me a list of words to write into a poem. Her words are the colours of the rainbow and this poem is for her...

LOTTIE LOVES CAKE

Lottie loves cake.

She loves it so much that she eats it all day long.

For breakfast she eats Moon Cake,

silver and round and full of the wonders of her dreams.

For lunch she eats Sky Cake,

big and wide as the clear blue sky,

with puffy clouds of icing on top

and a bird or two for decoration.

For dinner she eats Jungle Cake,

a very exciting cake,

covered with great leafy plants and bright pink flowers.

It is also a very noisy cake, 

with tigers growling and parrots squawking.

When her friend, Matilda, comes over for tea,

they play the viola and sing songs about cake

such as "every cloud has some silver icing"

and "there was an old woman who lived in a scone".

They eat Rose Cake together and paint their nails the colour of Roses.

Sometimes, they magic the cake into a real rose.

Then Felix, the dog, runs around in circles 

trying to catch the rose with his nose, it smells so good.

Barack, the cat, sits like an emperor, 

calm and majestic, and sips milk from a golden bowl.

Lottie asks her brother, Louis, if he would like a piece of Rose Cake

but he prefers to run around chasing Felix

and, anyway, Louis loves ice cream.

The Promotion