Oh Great

I was trying to decide 

whether it’s better the oceans are rising
than if they were drying up –
I mean emotionally, not scientifically – and
I couldn’t decide which was better
or worse, an abundance or absence,
to drown or to die of thirst.

-- Jane Arthur, New Zealand poet and owner of Good Books bookshop in Wellington

Image: River shoreline

Autumn

When autumn hits here,
the leaves tend not to fall.

They cling and quiver in the wind
like our disappointment in them

and the few that fall go slippery and annoy us.
The light, though, thaws our cold hearts

and we don’t even care we’re being cheesy
for a moment or so. Who needs

a new cliché? Not us, not
when there are bigger things to worry about –

and not when it’s still possible to put them aside
to look at the low shadows, the glow

of the evening sun across the branches
of the trees that refuse to be anything but green.

-- Jane Arthur, New Zealand poet and owner of Good Books bookshop in Wellington.

Travelling

How normal it feels
to get around new places—
how basely, physically normal it is
for our feet to touch the ground
and propel us forward, step after step
exactly as they do anywhere.

And if these roads home
one day become
the rivers they once were—
though we might have to pedal the currents
or steady our soles on pebbles—
we’ll soon get used to it.

A flavour’s only new at first taste;
and common sights become invisible;
and love dulls into something necessary;
and in grief we think this new lack
is impossible to live with but we do.


--Jane Arthur, New Zealand poet and owner of Good Books bookstore in Wellington.

Travelling

How normal it feels
to get around new places—
how basely, physically normal it is
for our feet to touch the ground
and propel us forward, step after step
exactly as they do anywhere.

And if these roads home
one day become
the rivers they once were—
though we might have to pedal the currents
or steady our soles on pebbles—
we’ll soon get used to it.

A flavour’s only new at first taste;
and common sights become invisible;
and love dulls into something necessary;
and in grief we think this new lack
is impossible to live with but we do.

-- Jane Arthur, New Zealand poet, from Craven, 2019