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

(Wordle word of the morning)

Double o vowels, a long, interesting sound

with the consonant ‘l’ as a flourishing finish

to drool is to savour perhaps, to desire

babies drool and we wipe their cute chins

an old man drools, and we see his decline

like spit when a friend spoke during Covid

sunlight lit their spit as it flew towards

you, sparkling, dangerous alive yet deathly

so that we dodged even while fascinated

that this flying drool existed, so vivid

illuminated, lively and terrifying hitherto

unnoticed and now possibly fatal

A poet should drool perhaps on each chosen

word, or wish to inspire a drool from a reader

the long double o sound with an l to land it

let’s drool

(Winter Swimming)

So you lovely ocean at my doorstep
a bathtub almost full then half full
tepid, warm and freezing

my blood pressure rises and falls
at whim sending my head spinning
and a cold shower is but a bitter
consolation

I want to swim in you my dear friend
the sea
I check my land, air, water app for the
key
If it's red, I must not swim E.coli lurks
in the wake of a storm
But orange is just a warning, like don't
swallow the sea just swim in me 
and I do

I wallow, kick, swim, lie back and adore
stand, watch through waves, admire 
the sea floor, random starfish, seaweed
I adorn myself with kelp bulbs, imagine
sharks but briefly, watch the sun rise
above the pines

watch the ferry leave, see latecomers
running, coats on
unaware I'm there, neck deep or floating
sometimes kicking vigorously
dodging waves if it's an orange day my
mouth closed
or practising my newly learned freestyle
face down

At age 5 I would shiver out of the water
standing in hot sand, teeth chattering
covered in goosebumps, towel around
my shoulders, licking an ice-cream
then giddy and sick on the sea-saw

At 73, emboldened by you, my darling sea
fearlessly entering you, unfazed by your
freezing arms, blood rushing to greet you

all my goosebumps gone

It was the 70’s sort of mid-way or thereabouts
Auckland coming of age, Antoines & Clichy
Ad Agency reps being wooed all over town
wine for a full-colour triple-page spread

Rick was his name, a groovy photographer
fresh from the Outback, his camera slung
carelessly across his neck, the strap festooned
with luggage labels like a Pacifika lei

He wore these labels like a pro and I guess he was
they flew him to Huka Lodge with some journos
put him up where Zane Grey once slept some
rustic extravagance (I did the expenses)

The journos caught trout at Lake Taupo
doing the sums, it seemed viable they’d
paid a scuba diver to watch out for them
feeding their fishing lines for the story

It was a great story, Muldoon and some sheep
on the front cover of the South Pacific issue
and some incorrect stats about Maori infant
mortality – hey, they only had three days and

hey they sold a triple-page full-colour spread
to the likes of Philip Morris – it’s a while ago now
I can’t be sure but mostly back then it was
tobacco companies funding TIME MAGAZINE

souls sold over flash white tablecloths
mostly men in suits possibly French wines
we girls in the back office doing the sums
typing up the invitations making reservations

Time has moved on and now we have Casey
bringing back the good old days
(a ciggie with your lunch anyone …)

Compos Mentis

Cross your fingers we used to say
as kids, when we heard the siren
saw an ambulance racing somewhere
blow your nose we said and hope
(because it rhymed) you never go
In one of those


Except of course, unless you’re dying
and that’s a good enough reason
perhaps to dial 111 although nice
if someone else can do it for you
because it’s tricky assessing life
and death when you’re worried
about inconveniencing everyone


So, we were super impressed with
the 20 something driver who backed
down our driveway (you have to see
the tricky bend at the top to get this)
right almost to our front door
and oh golly, I wonder what the
neighbours were thinking 



the teenager (well he looked that
age) with dreadlocks, head paramedic
entered our shoeless house in his boots
(it wasn’t a good time to announce our
house rules)
followed by a bright-faced young woman
who as it turned out was a trainee 
and full of smiles - they all were


lots of explanations, questions, kindness
and nek minnit  I’m in the back of the
ambulance (no chance to cross my fingers
or even blow my nose) and the trainee
girl full of smiles is putting in her very
first canula OUCH  but hey, there’s a
first time for everything me in the ambo
and her with the canula
hubby hot on our tail in his car


Would you like some fentanyl? I was surprised
such a nice offer and in shock I declined
worried that I might be out to it before we
arrived at the hospital and I wanted to be
compos mentis (you know, so I could explain
to the doctors just how I was feeling) and now
on reflection I wish I’d said, yes thank you



Anyway, it wasn’t life threatening even if
It had felt like it at the time with a heart rate
out of control, chest pressure and woozy woozy
Like I was dying I told my GP a week or so
later … when she explained I’d had a bad
reaction to the antibiotics she’d prescribed


And Hutt Hospital has to be nicest
place (via the back door) if you think you
might be dying

First she was harassed by the morality police for not wearing her hijab properly

or that’s the news down the international grapevine, and they ripped her clothes

What would you do?  It seems she decided to strip off down to her underwear

walk outside and sit among men and women mostly other students by the look

in her bras and underpants, arms folded in defiance or was that nonchalance

She’s become a meme and we retweet because we can and we feel virtuous



Of course, we can’t do a lot more than frown and rage at the rules that ensure

she must be covered up because we are Westerners with the right to run naked

Well, not to ruin a cricket match, but we could bathe openly on a beach or

strut our stuff unimpeded, half naked if you will without being arrested

or considered mental (well not legally, but some folk might disapprove)

but they can’t get us locked up in psychiatric care …



Well, not this year at least, but it’s only thirty or so years ago we did just that

put people who didn’t fit into strait jackets, locked them up, abused them

and refused to listen to them.  Mr Luxon wanted all the glory with

a big apology but not so much a big wad of money and let’s be careful here

journalists who like to ask sticky questions might get banned from Parliament

I mean we have to keep things seemly, although we don’t believe in censorship





So we’re free as women to dress how we choose, and rock our stuff

Ready to rebuff any unwanted attention, because we have rights but

hang on … we might be legally stalked by an ex boyfriend, raped by

a high-flying sportsman, whose career matters more than us or

murdered perhaps but at least we have our rights ...




To be furious that some men in some countries demand women cover up

We know about men who want to protect us, those caring, domineering,

high profile, good men  (could even be an eye surgeon doing pro bono work)

but I digress, I’m here on Courage Day to honour Ahoo Daryaei,......

Cheers (good health)

It’s a throw-away when glasses collide

or you might get continental and say

Santé, or try Korean, with geonbae

Or jjan if you’re feeling fluent

Travelling, light-hearted, toasting

In multiple languages, wishing

yourself and others good health

because why not, and who wouldn’t

every friend and stranger in a bar

across a noisy table, at a birthday

maybe Christmas or your team

just won or you have a drink so why not

Once a Norwegian boyfriend taught

me how to say cheers in Russian

alas it seems Nostrovia is really

the English version of Na Zdorovie

But by then I had Skål well and truly

under my hat, and knew alcohol

content of both Bokk and Juleøl

drank Pilsner at lunchtime

cin-cin (Italian) too try-hard

somehow a kind of private school

pretension or should that be public

the English are very confusing

I do know drinking makgeolli from

wooden bowls in a student pub

in Seoul, reminded me of Kava in Fiji

bula or jjan under sedation almost

nothing beats an outdoor table

by the 24/7 with a plastic bottle

of Soju and a group of halmoni

in sunshades on a Sunday morning

Cheers, jjan, goenbae, cin-cin

Sante, Sláinte, I almost forgot

bottoms up

fill up your cup

and I came to this

because

well, that good health suddenly

in my seventies has a whole new ring

to it, never mind the clash of glasses

and recalling that I took the Pledge

aged 12