PS Cottier

Skiing for the first time is like…

…strapping a fake pelican’s bill to your face
and being told go fish, go now, go quick!

And the sardines are fifty metres below
and the waves are all like Teahupo’o,

but icy as the Atlantic, not tropical Tahitian,
so you can’t feel your new prow because it’s frozen

to your nose. It’s growing, speedy as Pinocchio’s,
this aberrant beak, and you wish that you had lied

and pleaded stomach bugs or swine flu or Death,
who now looms, laughing in pink fluorescent pants

urging you to push off, go now, go quick!
And you gaze down, down to the white fields

soon to be strewn with your broken, severed legs,
punctuating cold pages with exclamatory pain.

Whoosh!!

PS Cottier

‘Skiing for the first time is like…’ awarded second prize in the Cooma Feast of Poetry 2009 (Adult open section). Published in Cooma Feast of Poetry chapbook, 2009.

Just a follow up from the mountain themed entry last week. But I have never skied; too much of a wimp, and too little snow. The nearest I’ve been is on a sled; a bit like the guy above.

UPDATE: I previously posted a link to a review I wrote of a history of Australian women’s football, but a reader has informed me that it’s behind a paywall, so I have removed it. So skiing is the only sport here!