How to become a 'poet'

This is a little poem that I wrote after a mornings nature walk with some children a few years back. They were all asked to provide a descriptive word of a tree we were looking at [ from all angles], and then we made up this little poem:

Our Tree

The slender young tree
stands calm and peaceful
glistening in the morning light
The sprawling twigs texture the sun
breaking through to the flaky bark
becoming scratched and fissured by age.

It is a really easy way to start composing poetry, which is after all only words that have a melodic rythm to them. Another type of poetry which I like is Haiku poems. I have done a few over the years.

Crows caw and gulls screech

while the oystercatchers wail

- it's a seaside tale!

written on the shore in Luce Bay, Galloway. I scratched this onto one pebble using another quartz pebble and left it on the shoreline for anyone else to read before it faded in the sun and sea.

Another time I was walking in some woodlands I often visit, and at a well used Badger sett, there was an old Badger skull which had obviously been dragged out of the sett when the badgers were doing their 'spring cleaning', along with some soil and loads of used bedding material. It made me think, almost immediately of this haiku:

Badger skull exposed

bring thoughts of doubtful repose

and mortality.