Saving Places - I Thought I Saw

First of all I have to say I’m amazed that this poem is written by a ten year old. I would not even be able to write something like that at my age of 15. It seems that she really knows what is going on around the world, and the consequences of it.

The message behind this poem is quite obvious and easy to understand. She’s talking about how humans have taken over the earth, and that we are slowly tearing it apart. The poem is full of beautiful descriptions of the nature, which helps it getting its message across and also makes the poem kind of touching. Her descriptions of the animals shows that not only does humans make it worse for themselves, our actions also have a huge influence on all the other living species on earth. The poem is written like the writer lives in the future, and all of those things that she is writing about have already happened. There are no longer fertile plains, the elephants and the buffalo have died out, only because of us, because of our industry, and pollutant factories.

There is an apparent structure in this poem too. Every sentence starts with “I thought I saw…” The verses are all kind of building up to the last verse. Up until then I feel like she is making her message come through in a gentle way, by describing the nature so you can really imagine it in front of you. In the last verse she is pushing her message on to you, if you did not get it already, by saying “All these things – They could not be, they all died out because of me”. It makes the end of the poem really strong, and it is not possible to just forget it at once.





Source: Searching 10
You can find the picture Here.