Tuesday poem: How Canberra
May 22, 2023
How Canberra
Parking at the AIS, pink imps called to me, or rather, grey imps wearing pink floppy hats. Gang-gangs opening gates in the sky. Walked to the pool, touching the bronze Guy Boyd woman poised on a plinth, the magic saint of all bad swimmers. Crawled through my twenty laps, more snail-stroke than free-style. Back to the car past groups of kids, past a well-known former athlete, past the memory of Covid marked by a discarded mask. Coffee at Tilley’s and more cockatoos, swinging below powerlines like avian punchlines, yellow fringes tickling the clouds.
PS Cottier

So a little translation for those who don’t live in Canberra; the AIS is the Australian Institute of Sport. Tilley’s is a venerable cafe in Lyneham, a suburb in the inner north of Canberra. And gang-gangs are a type of cockatoo. They are the faunal emblem of the Australian Capital Territory. An absolutely beautiful bird which can be seen quite frequently in Canberra, but which are overall becoming quite rare. Unlike the cocky in the photo.
Tuesday poem: Sandpit
May 4, 2023
So I wanted toy cars and trains, but was never given them. No matter, the boy over the road had plenty, and we’d construct paradises of zoom in his sandpit, trucks and cars jostling, even train carriages illicitly removed from inside model tracks. I remember once, sick with German measles, spotty as a Dalmatian, that a book about trains was lent to me, and I read the pictures, fever-driven, transplanted them to the sandpit by pure will, where my friend continued to build roads and water-marked tracks, temporary maps to a place where time stood still, and red vehicles bloomed. PS Cottier

Poem: Plains-wanderer
April 3, 2023
Plains-wanderer Pedionomus torquatus Someone took a quail and put it on a rack. It hasn’t stopped being surprised, and looks around comically, this tiny survivor, this left-over, balanced on gum-boot yellow legs. Or perhaps it is shocked by all the sheep, the cats, the fox, the foul apparatus introduced by recent arrivals, cockier than any cockatoo? Plains wanderer likes the quiet life; endless stubbly land it punctuates like a soft bracket. Last of its kind, all it needs is space unruffled, except by herbs, and the female’s russet red, blooming like a tiny sun, as she calls to smaller moon of male. PS Cottier

JJ Harrison, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
This year I was lucky enough to see the Plains-wanderer in the wild, which is truly a unique bird. The female is much larger than the male in this species, a bit similar to some birds of prey. But it is a truly harmless bird, and it was quite moving to see it hiding in the grass.
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