Inside Elephant
A few samples from a collection of about 50 animal poems.
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- 2019 reads
Inside Elephant
I have a long, long trunk, not a long, long neck, and great big African ears. They want my tusks for an ivory tower, but they’ve been missing for years. Inside this body
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- 3 comments
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- 1094 reads
A Million Things
The universe has a great, big soul that flew like a bird from a big, black hole and scorched the dark with its flaming wings, filling the void with a million things.
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- 1 comment
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- 614 reads
Armchair Penguin
The sun is out on the penguin line. Their sea is a china blue. Their suits are pressed for the day ahead as the fish train comes into view. Then, Over the painted rocks they hop and
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- 588 reads
Bamboo Bear
This poem is normally written in vertical columns and read from right to left. But you can read it left to right or in this case from end to beginning if you prefer!
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- 1 comment
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- 365 reads
Buffalo Cloud
Buffalo saw the Indian ride. A Bigfoot, Cheyenne, Arapaho Tide. Indian rode the buffalo plain before it was lost to a sea of grain. Chasing the great, black, buffalo cloud,
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- 2 comments
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- 1170 reads
Cat Got Up
Cat got up and walked the long, brick wall. Its shadow walked the pavement, four foot tall. It sat and purred and heard the shadows fall. Then, Cat got up and walked the long, brick wall.
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- 1 comment
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- 622 reads
Cat Walk
Soft, soft slow cat feet walking through the shimmering heat, far above the sea. Cheetah walks like a ballet dancer, face like Vivien Leigh. Slower, slower, slower .............
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- 2 comments
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- 609 reads
Foot Mules
This winter is a long, long way from home and starless as the pit. The fields, ploughed into trenches, hard with ice are dimly lit and hidden from the road, where khaki-coloured mules
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- 444 reads
Hunted
On the hills and the moors and the fells and the craggy steepsides, everything was snow. The farms were lost, the roads wound into nowhere. The Viking lakes were buried far below.
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- 314 reads
MAGICIANEE
Oh, what a magician the manatee is! (Disguised by his barnacle skin.) He has paddles for paws and a big shovel tail. But there's hocus and pocus within!
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- 2 comments
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- 484 reads
Paint Pot
The parrot could fly like a paint pot. He just opened his wings and flew. Over the grass and against the sky was the red and the yellow and blue. You could never describe
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- 276 reads
SAINT LEGGY
Sadly, a true story, although I never actually knew the centipede's name.
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- 3 comments
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- 582 reads
Swansong
The Queen has come to Bristol Bridge
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- 2 comments
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- 464 reads
The Cross Tick Acrostic
Aaaagh!
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- 2 comments
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- 501 reads
The Dog and the Cat and the Mouse
There's a three-legged dog on Half Moon street whose life is empty of yieldings. It's cold and hard when you have to sleep in the doorways of empty buildings.
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- 315 reads
The Mouse who had Long
The summer was as long as a field full of strawberries. And the wheat smelt warm and dry. And the mouse who had long been swinging on a stalk, looked up at the endless sky.
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- 327 reads
The Saturday Afternoon Dolphin
The dolphin soars out of my arms as if I had dreamt it and dives through the pavement and disappears down, like a laughing, blue clown, to invisible oceans below. So I carry on walking.
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- 302 reads
Happy Hour
Lazy in the river, singing mud as sweet as chocolate
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- 4 comments
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- 576 reads
HERE IS THE SHARK
In the dark of the deepest waters here comes the shark
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- 2 comments
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- 517 reads
KICK
The kangaroo was a kick-boxing king
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- 5 comments
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- 510 reads
Snow Flight
Snow flight is here
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- 2 comments
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- 390 reads
The Otter
It's just about an otter really
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- 8 comments
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- 877 reads
Urban Fox
Night time is my hunting ground.
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- 3 comments
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- 487 reads
There's A Goat
There’s the blue of the sky and the green of the hill, and the white of the house and the sun, almost still, and the twist of a branch bent by winds from the sea,
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- 2 comments
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- 916 reads
Sloth
The sloth woke up with a bright idea as he hung like a bag on a nail. It was bold and daring and crystal clear and could not possibly fail. It would change his world in a single glance
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- 4 comments
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- 882 reads
Shire
The Shire horse came out of the English earth. Out of the muddy field and the furrowed land. Shaped by the endless pulling of the plough. Shaped by the turning farmer’s turning hand.
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- 1 comment
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- 617 reads
Down
Down comes the jaguar, down to the water, down from the peace of the drippyleaf tree; green-eyed and elegant, mean in the moonlight, drinks from the water, looking at me.
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- 1 comment
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- 612 reads
Word Bird
Down Portishead, on a cold pebble shore, there were all-night fishermen on our all-night tour. And I said to my friend who loved his guitar, (watching star-bright boats on a star-black sky),
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- 2 comments
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- 837 reads
Outside Elephant
The elephant baby walked with his mum In the shade of her great, big elephant bum. When she swayed to the left, he swayed there too. His down was green and his up was blue.
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- 2 comments
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- 760 reads
Dust
I'm a speck in the dark. I am dust that is blown. I am lost on the way to the endless unknown. Am I lucky or not, when from nothing I came, that I've run out of fortune but shooting to fame?
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- 8 comments
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- 1357 reads
Zebra Crossing
The rains have come and the river is mean for the depths and the shallows are crocodile green. The river is deep and underneath are a million, trillion, zillion teeth.
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- 2 comments
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- 686 reads
Old Stripy
Here in the rivergreen leafsoft brushgold longmeadow seedblown bugclicking snakegrassy monkeytemple world, lies Old Stripy: kohl-eyed limb-easy power-yawning stretch-rolling
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- 4 comments
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- 798 reads
Nobody
"What's so funny?" said the hyena, though his mouth was stretched to a grin. The joke on the Masai Mara was wearing a little bit thin. He looked far and wide at the grasslands.
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- 4 comments
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- 679 reads
Sheep Eating Grass
The ground was soft and the air was peaty. Forty soldiers, mad and meaty, burst from their tanks and jumped from the sky, practising war and pretending to die.
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- 6 comments
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- 990 reads
Orca Porker
The giant blubber submarines tuxedoed through the ocean. Four double-biller, Thriller killer Whales in locomotion. The mafiosa of the deep In glorified formation. A muscle busting,
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- 3 comments
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- 640 reads
Knowingly
The owl, with moth-dust wings, Flew on the snowy air, Past silky trees And over sleeping fields Where Saxon gold lay buried Like a prayer. His wings as wide as time, He stilled the night;
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- 3 comments
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- 551 reads
Norse the Horse
It's not against people descended from Normans -probably, all of us - its against people who behave like one!
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- 2 comments
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- 622 reads
Still Falling
The leaf breaks and falls, drifts on a lilt of air and falls again, down decades of green light and bounteous rain, still falling…. sweet as a kite,...
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- 6 comments
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- 716 reads
Deep or Run
(Better read it in a voice like Kenny Rogers)
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- 6 comments
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- 891 reads
Drawn
Somebody painted the moon in the big, black sky a magical moon, as perfect as it could be...
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- 2 comments
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- 400 reads
THE SEA HORSE SWAM
My daughter likes this one best so I'm putting it on!
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- 13 comments
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- 1589 reads
PIG FACE
My name is Pig Face, said the pig.
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- 10 comments
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- 1237 reads
FRUIT BAT
Fruit bat sleeps in the house
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- 12 comments
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- 1305 reads
In the Middle, Elephants
The sky is dry. A terracotta riverbed winds by.
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- 6 comments
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- 696 reads
Henry Foxington
Before my computer crashes completely, I'll put this on. Fingers crossed.
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- 9 comments
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- 1983 reads
Said the Horse

from photos found in an old suitcase, wasn't able to add the photos though
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- 25 comments
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- 4439 reads
Fathomless
Up from the great and fathomless...
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- 318 reads
Only a bird
In its wings were African skies. Its eyes dark glimmers of the Northern sea.
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- 9 comments
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- 1086 reads
Flew a Bird
On small branch on a small tree sat a small bird...
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- 12 comments
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- 1063 reads
All

All snow is snow to the snow leopard.
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- 23 comments
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- 3121 reads
Ah, the Truffle
Ah, the truffle said Professor Pigg....
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- 6 comments
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- 975 reads
Wizard
Only the soft chaff, drifting slowly, across the wheatfield..
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- 3 comments
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- 443 reads
Bluegantic
Bluegantic in the Atlantic
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- 8 comments
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- 1356 reads
Foxed
Dark fox on the Arctic rocks....
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- 5 comments
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- 755 reads
Hare Stops
The hare stops there in the cornfield stubble....
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- 4 comments
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- 1109 reads
Five Wolves
Five wolves run... I saw these at Wild Place, near Bristol, yesterday.
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- 5 comments
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- 909 reads
Beyond
There was fear in the yard and the wood mouse hid....
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- 20 comments
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- 3044 reads
Far away, the Manta Ray

Far above the ordinary, half an angel, half a Goth – through the sunlit underwater, floating like a table cloth......
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- 15 comments
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- 2023 reads
Dolphinical
The shape of the sea is in our bones...
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- 13 comments
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- 774 reads