Leonardo 2012: Leafing Through Childhood


Katie Green won the Year 7 Leonardo Prize on Wednesday, 27thJune, for her poem, Leafing Through Childhood


A tree.
Branches make up that tree.
Leaves cling to those branches.
A man.
Special moments make him what he is.
In those moments, key seconds, determining their effect.

Engraved in the branches of that man
Are the moments that decide who he is.

Stored in one, his first romance.
Age fourteen, they bump in the corridor.
Blue eyes, blonde hair,
She enchants him.
Their first kiss,
Tentative.

On another, his first exam.
The leaves tell of him entering
Anxiously glancing around.
The clock ticks and he hurries to finish.
The results come back.
He failed, teaching him to work for what he wants.

His first day of senior school,
Whisper the leaves.
He huddled into his books,
And started to cry,
Lost in an endless sea of bodies.

The leaves, the branches, tell of the tree.
And we listen, hoping to gain insight, into what’s
Behind the rough bark.

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