Jan lives in Wanaka, having returned to Otago in 2001 from a long sojourn away. She has a commitment to writing and words, to the arts and to history (natural, New Zealand landscape, family, and cartography). Her work has appeared in Takahe, Printout, Poetry NZ, Spin and Kapiti Poems. She reads at Poetic Justice in Wanaka.
YO!
last night the black shine of rain,
today
a coyote accompanied me to work,
it placed its feet exactly
on the centre
of each wet, yellow leaf on the pavement
and laughed,
as if it was the only
real
thing to do:
between times a friend has died
and I am walking barefoot
where no-one can follow me
DIVINING LINE
I don’t know how I can tell you
where it is,
that single, silver gleam
that cuts off night
and starts the birdsong blast
of morning come
on the half-way side
of dawning
in the crystal grey
that merges
one side of the firmament
into the other,
a thrush draws a line,
it says,
AN INTERNAL ANGUISH
The cold silken slip of sea water, salt crusts on the eyes,
my feet in the shallow lace of the tide,
sideways-running sand
denying both mass and gravity
undermines me, so that I stagger and fall into pools,
into the deep cave of my instep.
Tears escape, we say, as if
they have been incarcerated in the body,
as if not crying was an act of violence against water.
