Meditation on Yangzhou

he sweeps morning
and night enters his pores
as he might over

a good book or a map
of dislocation—if only
they were

in English
he walks and loses
himself

with all this
Chinese food
and language oh

Wei he says
over the line
she is used

to Crikey
My foot is giving me
gyp

Yangzhou is a city along the Yangtse River between Nanjing and Shanghai. Wei is the greeting used when answering the phone in Mandarin.

Who Says Old Dogs Can’t Learn New Tricks?

Kevin says beagles can’t bark.
The one next door is timid
and grey-haired but knows how to
howl, thrown back to his wolf fore
bears no doubt, not some cute hound
sniffing out mandarins and
other recreational
drugs. ‘Beagles!’ says Janet. ‘Don’t
be fooled by those gorgeous eyes.
See my grey hair? My beagle
failed puppy school. Never take
a beagle for a walk – it
will pick up a scent and you
won’t see it again for days!’
Curiosity coupled
with persistence did not kill
the cat, merely the beagle
owner. Ruth Ward sought a pooch
with intelligence and a
lot of character, not the
outrageously spirited
rogue her beagle turned out to
be. As secretary of
the Beagle Club she admits,
‘Beagle puppies certainly
are challenging. Our life was
utter chaos for the first
two years but I would not change
a thing. I’m really concerned
that so many delightful
beagles end up in the wrong
homes. The club has a constant
flow of beagles in need of
new, loving, forever homes.’
I look at my new husband.
My Kevin has silver hair,
tidy habits, he has an
intelligent, curious,
persistent nature. He is
not timid, just a little
reserved. ‘Complicated,’ I
say, backed up by Myers-Briggs,
but he won’t admit it. ‘I’m
a simple man... Some people
have such convoluted minds –
I think they must read too much
Ezekial.’ ‘Yes dear,’ I
say, smoothing his beagle brow.

Janet is the award-winning NZ non-fiction writer, Janet Hunt. The poem was inspired by an interview with Ruth Ward, secretary of the NZ Beagle Club, as published in 2009 in Wellington's Dominion Post.

you and i – a conversation

cloud to sky
leaf to wind
toetoe in the shifting dunes

toetoe is the Maori name for a large plumed tussock iconic to the New Zealand landscape