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.