Poem: Bogongville
October 1, 2026
That flag-pole must be magnetic,
pulling them in like soft iron filings,
throwing them down to fluttering lawn,
now carpeted in giant rug of quiver.
Magpies fatten on sudden protein,
flightless sumos, warbles muted
by wads of cotton wool moth.
Is it the twisted light, the hot rumble
that lemmings them here in Canberra,
those soft knock-knock jokes told
on Parliamentary windows?
The conga line of lunatics
dies, baited by abundance;
mistaking glare for moonlight’s
whisper, its fitting glove of glow.
PS Cottier
The numbers of bogong moths are finally increasing, after their numbers crashed in 2017. Drought and increasing temperatures were to blame. It’s great to see them coming back again; hopefully not just an upwards blip on a downward trending graph. Parliament House in Canberra used to sport very fat magpies who feasted on the moths. The flagpole referred to is the enormous one that flies the Australian flag over that building.
This poem was written back in those days where they formed huge swarms, and hid in discarded shoes. (They are flying to cool caves to multiply and die.) The photo, which does not really catch the numbers around, was taken on the south coast of NSW.
Tuesday poem: via link
July 17, 2024
I just had a poem published at Eye to the Telescope, called “Stuffed Koala and Other Cocktails of the Near Future”. The theme of this issue, edited by Gretchen Tessmer, is Strange Mixology, and it’s well worth a tipple. Here’s a link to the issue, scroll down for my poem. This publication is run by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, based in the US.
Glossy black cockatoo
January 16, 2022
Spotted two glossy black cockatoos down at the coast, feasting in a (sort of) suburban yard. Is seeing them purely a good thing, given that so much of the bush burnt recently? Have they been driven beyond their comfort zone, looking for casuarina? The lovely photo of the female cockatoo was taken by a neighbour.
Trees gone glossy gentle creaking of pods displacement PS Cottier
Tuesday poem: Limits
October 26, 2021
Limits ‘Nature cannot be regarded as something separate from ourselves or as a mere setting in which we live.’ Pope Francis Four months ago the trees looked like trees drawn in charcoal by a depressed artist — simple strokes of black connecting earth to noon-time grey, throat-choking, skies. Now, watch the festoons of green circling the trunks, as if strewn by the world’s worst exterior decorator. Such vivid newness, almost artificial in its neon promise. And yet, such trees have known blazes many years, lightning-spat, or most carefully set, by those who shaped the land, farmed with fire, forty thousand years or more. We comfort ourselves, forget that this mega-blaze, man-made, was the very opposite of skill. We have changed the seasons, charged the air, dried the possibilities of rain into a parched riverbed of loss. Yes, the trees still push out leaves. Frail canopy above dead mounds of wombat, of lyre-bird-less, song-lost, ground. The reassurance of regeneration this time asks us how many more times green can possibly appear. If next year, and the next, another blaze exceeds all history, will even gumtrees stay gloomed — dead sticks we poked into a lessened land? PS Cottier
Everyone is pleased to see the bush regenerating after a fire, but how many times can it do so after the mega fires that climate change brings?
Three poems at Eureka Street
April 27, 2021
Very happy to see three of my poems published at Eureka Street today, called ‘In the back of this poem’, ‘The eclectus parrot’, and ‘The edge of empty’, which is about extinction due to mega fires caused by climate change. I hope you enjoy them. Here is a picture of the male and female eclectus parrot.
