My First Poem

This is the first poem I ever wrote. Maybe not the very first, because I remember, when I was in second grade, our English teacher then asked us to write a poem about Jesus. I wrote something with "Jesus, King of the Jews" in one of the stanzas, but I didn't have a copy of that. It was a school activity. The poem I'm going to share with you is something I didn't write for school. I wrote it because I wanted to.

A Tree, A Friend

A tree is a friend
A friend that never end
Giving us fresh air
Here and everywhere.

God created a tree
For you and me
For us to share
That fruits that it bear

Trees that God made
Trees that give us shade
A shade that can make us cool
So the leaves, please don't pull

Let's take care of the trees
Make them increase
Let's take care of nature
For the better of our future


I wrote the poem when I was 10. I wrote it because I love Joyce Kilmer's poem, Trees, which we memorized and recited individually when we were in third grade for Reading class. Actually, back in third grade also, our Language teacher made us write a poem on trees. I wrote the first stanza of this poem in third grade; I submitted a two-stanza poem. And then, when I was 10, I decided to add stanzas to my poem on trees. I kept the first stanza, changed the second, and added two more.

I submitted this to our elementary school paper when I was in fifth grade. It didn't get published. I tried again the following year, and it had the same fate. When I was a high school freshman, I tried again, but it didn't see print. I decided to just keep it.

Reading it now, I'm laughing at myself for the grammatical errors I'm seeing. Comparing it with my more recent works, this poem pales in terms of choice of words and style. And let's not forget grammar. Haha! But still, I treasure this poem. I thought I've already lost this. So imagine how happy I am when I found it as I was rummaging through some old CDs.

When I wrote poems back then, I wanted them to have rhyme. Hence, this poem's rhyming last words. I also wanted them to convey messages, like a call of action or something. I hope, despite the limitations of this poem, it did impart an important message: that we must take care of nature. After all, as Joyce Kilmer had written:

"Poems are made by fools like me
But only God can make a tree."