Earth Day Poetry Contest First Place Winners 2015

Grade K

By Ezekiel Clinkingbeard

If I Were a Saguaro Cactus

If I were a saguaro cactus
Living creatures would use me as their home.
Gila woodpeckers and great horned owls
Make a nest shaped like a dome.

First they peck a hole in me.
Then they fly away.
I make the dome get harder
It takes me days and days.

Some birds make a nest on top,
Sitting on my arms
They eat my red and seed filled fruit
I wouldn’t cause them harm.

The long-nosed bats take nectar out of my flowers
And pollinate my fruit.
I like sharing myself with all these creatures.
And make a saguaro boot.

Grade 1 (tied)

By Victoria Delgado

King Snake

King snake slithers,
King snake slides.
King snake has rattlesnake
In its eyes.
King snake, ready to strike!
Sneaky rattlesnake
Slithers under a rock.
Too bad for king snake.
No lunch today!

Grade 1 (tied)

By Aryana Clinkingbeard

The Gecko

The beautiful brown and black gecko
Lives in the canyons and rocks.
It has a fat tail and skinny legs.
It looks like a scorpion when it walks.

It tries to look for food in the night
And sleeps in the hot, hot day.
It likes to eat spiders and grasshoppers,
Because they are its prey.

Sometimes the gecko is an animal’s prey.
Its tail comes off on the ground.
It runs away and then it hides.
Its tail grows back, fat and round.

Grade 2 (Tied Overall Winner for Grades K-3)

By Clementine Dasse

Amazing Dreams

The trees sing and whisper
in a distance by the shining horizon
and kids are all wrapped up in their blankets at night.
Saguaros at night
have amazing faces in starlight.
The morning awakes the earth
in the bright light of the sun.
The sky and the rivers are in love
with the peace in the air.
The hidden mirror is in the path
of the hidden stars of the night.
It is the season of summer
when the turquoise stones
return to amazing dreams.

Grade 2 (Tied Overall Winner for Grades K-3)

By Eric Morton

The Powerful Stream

Powerful stream of rain water following a trail of gold In the desert sunset.

Grade 3

By Garrett Maskey

Desert ABC

A snake slithers
Beautiful sunsets
Cacti are green
Desert plants grow
Echoes in the night
Fast jack rabbits hop around
Grass hoppers everywhere
Hot and dry
It is dry
Javelinas get mad easily
Killer Rattle snakes
Live things everywhere
Mice running from predators
Night time is full of action
Owls fly and look for mice
Predators on the hunt
Quail families walk in a line
Rattle snakes slither everywhere
Saguaro cacti are only here
Tortoises walk across the sand
Unexpectedly, I got bit by a rattle snake
Visiting the desert is fun
When it is dry the plants don’t mind
eXoskeletons left on the ground
Yip Yaps from coyotes all night long
Zippy little lizards

Grade 4 (Tied Overall Winner for Grades 4-6)

By Xander Clinkingbeard

Watershed

Lighter than air, rising into the sky,
From glistening lakes and river beds,
From tiny puddles and giant oceans,
It’s the journey of the watershed.

Into dark and threatening clouds,
The evaporated water rises.
Soon the shadowed clouds will swell,
As they grow to humongous sizes.

Boom! Crash! Lightning flash!
Sinister sounds from the sky!
The monsoon rains begin to fall –
Rivers no longer dry.

Gila River, Santa Cruz,
San Pedro and the Salt
Rushing, overflowing banks
Storm coming to a halt.

When the final raindrop falls,
The desert’s thirst is quenched.
Tall saguaros, nice and fat,
The arid land is drenched.

The shimmering sun comes out to shine,
Heating the magnificent land.
Lakes evaporating into the sky,
Leaving dry desert sand.

Lighter than air, rising into the sky,
From glistening lakes and river beds,
From tiny puddles and giant oceans,
It’s the journey of the watershed.

Grade 5

By Raven Burns

Sonoran Sunset

I have never seen anything as beautiful as the Sonoran sunset.
The open sky like a freshly cut orange.
The clouds a fluffy lump of pink cotton candy you get at the fair.
The trees looming black out line like the out stretched shadow of a mountain lion’s paw.
All the color shaded like nature’s masterpiece.
This is the Sonoran sunset I love before the dark consumes the night.

Grade 6 (Tied Overall Winner for Grades 4-6)

By Myla Saczko

Night in the Desert
A Haiku Poem

The coyote stares
At the dark’ning midnight sky
With his liquid eyes.

Into the sky point
The fuzzy tips of his ears
Listening for prey.

As his pointed ears
Lilsten ot the silent night,
They hear a faint sound.

A frightened hare creeps
Slowly into the moonlight,
Rustling the grass.

The coyote sees
The rabbit only as prey.
He pounces, then sways.

The rabbit bounds fast!
The coyote’s nose was scraped.
The coyote trips!

But he catches up.
The coyote is faster.
He bites down hard – once.

The hare is no more.
And the coyote lies down,
For now it is dawn.