‘… a mixture of gravity and waggery’

PS Cottier

She stares at all food to hypnotise it into her mouth
She never worries about ideas like fat or calories
She inhales all tucker as if it was light as butterfly wings
She is forbidden bones as she swallows them anaconda whole
She prances every night with her rubber ball, inviting play
She only growls when playing, which shows a sense of humour
She does not know that her round kind were first bred to hang off bulls’ faces
She lies on her back to invite the sun’s caress
She tolerates my hand if the sun is cloud-hidden
She cannot imagine anything more heavenly than a walk
She is the very shape of God in a humbler moment
She does not trust the small and fluffy of her kind
She does not understand the fear I feel at her great age
She licks the concrete where a chip lay four years ago
She eats possum pellets with the lust some have for salted liquorice
She barks at possums madly, despite their bums’ largesse
She pushes through bull-waves to retrieve a lofted stick
She snores magisterially, and the sound is comfort
She demands a towel when the showers make her wet
She can’t perceive she holds my heart like that rubber ball
Her comma tail mimics its beat, swish-swish swish-swish

*Christopher Smart from “Jubilate Agno” (“For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.”)

PS Cottier and elderly staffy, Mango, roam the streets of Canberra’s inner north. In between walks, the former writes poetry. Her two new books are V8, co-written with Sandra Renew (Ginninderra Press) and Tuesday’s Child Is Full (In Case of Emergency Press), which is made up of poems first published at pscottier.com, mostly on Tuesday. PS Cottier is currently the poetry editor at The Canberra Times. She collects garden gnomes.

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