Old School Prize
The timekeeper looks at my date stamp,
my damp pages stained brown as spilt tea
or weak coffee, and clocks my bent spine,
the dog-eared corners and wrinkled edges,
the fact that I've been on this back shelf
so long, since some time last century,
would you believe: slim volume, old school prize,
inscribed, beaten-up, dust jacket lost;
and places me in the box for worn-out cast-offs.
David Eggleton is a poet and writer based in Ōtepoti/Dunedin. His most recent collection of poems is The Wilder Years: Selected Poems, published by Otago University Press in 2021. He is the Aotearoa New Zealand Poet Laureate for 2019-2022.