My Native Leaf
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Jesse Dick, Grade 10, St Mary's College
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Poetry
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2018
Excellence Award in the 'Write Along 2018' competition
The Irish love their Native Leaf that in their Island grows
The Scottish and the English love the thistle and the rose.
But greater than these flowers and dearer far to me
The emblem I love best of all is the native Blue Gum tree.
It sheltered me when I was young, beneath its bows I played.
The house where I was born was built beneath a Gum trees’ shade.
And often in the days gone by, the days when we were boys
That old Gum shared my childish thoughts, my sorrows, and my joys.
If perchance that I should fall beneath a foreign sky,
I hope some passing wind will blow a gum leaf where I lie.
A gum leaf fresh and fragrant blown from a wild gum tree
That grows in far Australia, the Island of the Free.