A sick-bay bow-wow – Sam Hunt

A sick-bay bow-wow – Sam Hunt

The dog’s back leg ripped open,
Some weekender’s possum trap:

Ignoring rage, I bind up
Minstrel’s leg the best I can…

Then this most moving scene:
All the dogs of Bottle Creek

Come visiting. They know he’s sick;
Bring him bones though times are lean.



I found these poems in an old poetry anthology from school. Unfortunately there isn't a reference for where they originally came from.

A Mangaweka Road song – Sam Hunt

A Mangaweka Road song – Sam Hunt

No place more I’d like to bring you than
this one-pub town
approached in low gear down
the gorges through the hills.

Now they’ve built the by-pass
the drinkers left are locals
& odd commercial travellers.
Quiet afternoons like this you hear the falls

On the Post Office corner
a blue flag floats. I bought
a hot meat pie at the store
a new harmonica.

A public bar drinker
tells me what I want to hear.
I play for him later
songs on my harmonica.

We know each other now
I buy my round of beers,
I catch up on the news
in small town public bars.

They ask me why I travel
& never settle down
I lost two games of pool
& hitchhike out of town.




I found these poems in an old poetry anthology from school. Unfortunately there isn't a reference for where they originally came from.

The sun speaks at Perihelion – Janet Frame

Focus on Frame

The sun speaks at Perihelion – Janet Frame

On the twelve Christmas days
I thought my gift and your treasure
would be shining closest to earth.
Why did spires gouge out my eyes?
Why did the television crucifix
mingle my blood
with dancing girls, the Truth Game,
and the crisscross Quiz of Christ?



I found these poems in an old poetry anthology from school. Unfortunately there isn't a reference for where they originally came from.

Resolution – Janet Frame

Focus on Frame!

Resolution – Janet Frame

I’ll not make a string of words
like cheap poppet-beads
to form my sentence of death
the circle that stops my breath.



I found these poems in an old poetry anthology from school. Unfortunately there isn't a reference for where they originally came from.

Once – Janet Frame

Focus on Frame!

Once – Janet Frame

Once the warm draught of people
flowing under the locked door that held me from them
changed my flame, played
influence on my shadow,
burned and re-burned me where I made
my tablets of wax in the dark.

Then beyond the door all was still.
Thief blackbird stopped up the keyhole
where birdbeaks of light, comforting, had pecked crumbs through.
A winter I could never know
sealed the cracks with an evil they called snow.
It was so pure, falling
from nowhere, its flakes blinding.

Beyond the door all was still.
Cleaned in my lonely ritual.



I found these poems in an old poetry anthology from school. Unfortunately there isn't a reference for where they originally came from.

Sparrows climb the stair – Janet Frame

Focus on Frame!
Who would have guessed I had so many Frame poems!

Sparrows climb the stair – Janet Frame

Sparrows climb the stair
smoke makes an archway,
the holiday children steer
gocarts in the street of yellow hedges;
and the little ring-eyes never fly alone.

Paths of snow on the hills
higher than we remember of know
above the town of slowest growth
where mayor and councillors cry
for industry
and feasting on suet and honey
the little ring-eyes never fly alone.


I found these poems in an old poetry anthology from school. Unfortunately there isn't a reference for where they originally came from.

The Peach – Janet Frame

Focus on Frame

The Peach – Janet Frame

What has taken the peach in hand
to make it ripe so fur so
cover it with gold mildew
like new decay spelling birth?

What time began it, what day
rolled it backward from sour stone
gathering thick moss of sun
on pathways thickest with worm?




I found these poems in an old poetry anthology from school. Unfortunately there isn't a reference for where they originally came from.

Comment – Janet Frame

Focus on Frame

Comment – Janet Frame

Smell of sweat I the armpits dismays more
than the distant smell of the dead in a jungle war.
Possible and important are the blind date and alley but not
the blind man and his plight.

Heaven is curls in place
guipure over fine embroidered lace, leather
simulated, not mind membrane, human
skin woven together on an unknown face.

A clanger dropped at afternoon tea
is more shocking than a plane-load of bombs on Hanoi.
The cancelling of a rugby match through rain
is more lamented than the cancelling of a thousand me.

So let us cheer for our strange worldly wisdom in knowing
how to pack into our life’s thrilling journey
such little happinesses that keep us determinedly going
to hell and back!



I found these poems in an old poetry anthology from school. Unfortunately there isn't a reference for where they originally came from.

Wet Morning – Janet Frame

Focus on Frame!

Wet Morning – Janet Frame

Though earthworms are so cunningly contrived
without an opposing north and south wind
to blow the bones of Yes apart from the flesh of No,
yet in speech they are dumbly overturning,
in morning flood they are always drowned.

This morning they are trapped under the apple tree
by rain as wt as washing-day is wet and dry.
An abject way for the resilient anchorage of trees,
The official précis of woman and man,
The mobile pillarbox of history, to die!




I found these poems in an old poetry anthology from school. Unfortunately there isn't a reference for where they originally came from.

Around the ragged rocks the ragged rascal ran – Janet Frame

Focus on Frame!

Around the ragged rocks the ragged rascal ran – Janet Frame

This phosphorescent plate
with rugged edges
that are rocks not entwined roses

might heaving turn to serve up
a tongue twister from a drowned man’s mouth
- a ragged rascal.

I remember him running and running along the beach
the cuts on his feet bleeding, his eyes staring wild.
And then he was floating in the sea, dead.
A ragged rascal, the people said.
They made us say it too, slowly and quickly to improve our speech

Around the ragged rocks the ragged rascal ran

I wonder did he know or care
that his suffering on that lonely South Island beach
might improve our speech?
Or did he understand and deplore
the too many trivial uses of adversity?




I found these poems in an old poetry anthology from school. Unfortunately there isn't a reference for where they originally came from.

Dunedin Morning – Janet Frame

Focus on Frame!


Dunedin Morning – Janet Frame

The Leith is always a loud grumbler
after a feed of high-country rain
and cannot keep its wide apron clean.

Smoke is early, earliest.
Birds wake, test gear, rest,
make a more subdued start upmorning.

On the city’s doorstep, light,
diluted with last night’s rain,
is taken in, opened, and seen.


I found these poems in an old poetry anthology from school. Unfortunately there isn't a reference for where they originally came from.