The Error Of Equality
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Ainsley Lea, Grade 10, Mountain Creek State High School
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Poetry
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2018
Excellence Award in the 'Write Along 2018' competition
The civilised voice echoed through the dark canopy
Announcing the competition designed to ruin me,
“To climb this tree as old as the sun,
will separate the intelligent from the dumb.”
Acting with wild haste, us beasts clawed the oaken skin
Searching for a way up, frenzied to win
The hollow boned creatures fluttered up into the air,
Us, the land bound screamed in outrage, utter despair
But then shrewdness crept in, changing the presumed rules.
Critters climbed, slithered and swung and I was left a fool
I searched with honour, then deceit for solutions unfound
Wallowing in my ineptness to escape the ground.
The canopy’s cutting eyes stoically watched me fail
Condemned to a life of inadequacy in every tragic wail
If only one creature told me, the uselessness in my every swish
For it is stupidity to think a tree can be climbed by a fish.