Laughing with pigs

It’s 1973 and I’m breathless with
life hitching a lift in Norway
it’s dusk going on evening and
a truck stops to pick me up

we chat with my newly learned Norsk
a real conversation, I’m feeling fluent
the truck driver is happy to chat
a friendly bloke with no English

I ask him what he’s carrying in the back
of his truck but he has no words so
he pulls over, stops the truck and
we get out to look at his pigs

I’m riding in a truck that is loaded with
pigs… pigs, I say, pigs and he says griser
back and forth, pigs, griser, pigs 
he slaps his thigh with one hand laughing

back and forth, pigs, griser, pigs, griser
all the way back to my hotel where I work
loving this shared hilarity of new words
feeling fluent, pigs, pigs are griser

He drops me off, and we wave goodbye
like old friends and it’s barely a week later 
one evening in the bar when I learn that 
pigs with a Kiwi accent sounds like

a Norsk word for male genitalia
my affection for the truck driver
is renewed… no sly slant, just
genuine laughter and a lift home

If this was Netflix, I’d be dead by now