Two Poems

By the Sheep Gate

Are these the lame, blind, infirm and withered 
who’ve flung off motel towelling robes, slid

their complimentary slippers under the loungers? 
(Holy ground—they know it.)

Does an angel stir the waters?  
And creation’s primal call: is that deep’s talk

to deep I catch in every drop of utter blue 
babbling through the pool?
Each molecule

in these clouds of steam once a rising spark  
from mantle fire that burns in darkness

in the belly of the earth?  
Naturally, I didn’t
wonder out loud but, uncertain

of mid-miracle protocol, I do only half-turn 
when a half-seen man next to me in the Priest Spring—

all voice behind his vapour veil—speaks.  
For the last
38 years he’s come here, looking for a cure;

there’s always something to come back for, 
he adds with a laugh.
I almost let slip

what happens at the end 
of the day: surly lifeguards hurry

prune-skinned over-stayers from pools 
of their own belief, who snatch up

their robes and walk 
to changing rooms snaked with sluicing hoses

and woody disinfectant scent; the shut-off tap, 
the drained tubs, the rinsed-out spell.

 

The Basin Reserve

For a full day the steward watches the cricket 
in the lenses and expressions of the crowd.

She follows the action in their reactions—
stroke through the covers, turned-down appeal—

reads the scoreboard from the corner 
of her eye, a peripheral understanding

of how smiles, ooos, and applause 
meet in the final analysis. After close of play

she goes home, switches 
on the day’s highlights, catches a glimpse

of her back when the camera follows the ball 
to her arc of the boundary.

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Ben Egerton is a poet and lecturer from Wellington, where he teaches in the School of Education at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. His first collection, The Seed Drill, was published in 2023 by Kelsay Books.