Poem: About swimming
February 23, 2023
counting each lap mathematical strokes fifty metre groan PS Cottier

I’m just getting back into swimming. Unfortunately I don’t have a man with a rope to drag me along. I swim very slowly during the public access hours at the Australian Institute of Sport. Once, some years ago, some people filmed me swimming, probably thinking I was a proper swimmer from the Australian team. If I was, Australia would only win participation medals at the Olympics.
Passing beauty: poem
January 10, 2023
Passing beauty It's moving, just ahead of the player's most clever feet. Every four years, we fill a cup, then pour it out, a month of dreams. Was it just last week that Bergkamp flicked with orange elegance, side-footing space and time? No, he is long gone now, off fielding fifty years. Others follow. Messy time melts beauty, remoulds it, casts it always anew. It never ages, constantly fired, as we fade, we watchers, yesterday's players, passing. Twenty sips at the cup will fill a lifetime; held safe in keeper's hands. PS Cottier This football poem was first published in Eureka Street, and then in broadsheet (New Zealand), no 13, Special World Cup football issue, 2014. Finally (before today!) in Boots, a new edition of Mark Pirie’s 2014 football poetry anthology, 2017. I refuse to look up how old the Dutch player Bergkamp is now! I am not the only one still suffering minor withdrawal symptoms after the end of the World Cup. Great to see Argentina win, and the pun on the word 'messy' in my poem is deliberate. I am very much looking forward to the Women's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand this year.

Image Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Poem: Befitting
December 4, 2022
Twice as long as my palms, my new loves sparkle, shine, make no demands. I do not intend to attract anyone with them. They are certainly not flashy signals or invitations. I stroke the glassy sides, kiss where a tongue would sit — but neither has a tongue. They glide onto my eager feet just when I want, and if I dance, I dance for myself, admiring the play of sun on cupping glass. My feet framed with transparency, I skip, slide, saunter and spin on the open, prince-less green — slippers fitting just so. PS Cottier

And I do note the overwhelming wee-ness of the slippers in that illustration! (Aubrey Beardsley)
Poem: Eggshell garden
November 10, 2022
Half an egg, hidden in a drawer, a tiny half-skull among the socks. She gathers dirt, careful not to leave a tell-tale trail, fills her tiny cup, waits until dandelions are blown into wishes, wraps a seed in tissue. She puts her garden on the windowsill, a promise behind the curtains, which are printed with pink roses and stringy effusions of lavender. Sprouting towards the light, a tiny green finger pokes into being, and the eventual flower is more dandekitten than anything fierce. It purrs in her mind, her flower wattle-like yellow, punctuating her bedroom with a freedom of glee. PS Cottier

Somewhere there’s a photo of me as a child holding a plant which is growing inside an eggshell. That memory inspired this poem.