Heemi
(for James K. Baxter)
Hone Tuwhare
No point now my friend in telling
you my lady’s name.
She wished us well: ordered wheels
which spun my son and me like
comets through the lonely night.
You would have called her Aroha.
And when we picked up three young
people who’d hitched their way
from the Ninety Mile Beach to be
with you, I thought: yes
your mana holds, Heemi. Your mana
is love. And suddenly the night
didn’t seem lonely anymore.
The car never played up at all.
And after we’d given it a second
gargle at the all-night bowser
it just zoomed on gulping
easily into the gear changes
up or down.
Because you’ve been over this road
many times before Heemi, you’d
know about the steady climb ahead
of us still. But once in the tricky
light, Tongariro lumbered briefly
out of the clouds to give us the old
‘up you’ sign. Which was real friendly.
When we levelled off a bit at the top
of the plateau, the engine heat couldn’t
keep the cold from coming in: the fog
swamping thick and slushy, and pressing
whitely against tired eyeballs.
Finally, when we’d eased ourselves
over a couple of humps and down down
the winding metalled road to the river
and Jerusalem, I knew things would be
all right. Glad that others from the
Mainland were arrowing toward the dawn
like us.
Joy for the brother sun chesting over
the brim of the land, and for the three
young blokes flaked out in the back seat
who would make it now, knowing that they
were not called to witness
some mysterious phenomenon of birth on
a dung-littered floor of a stable
but come simply to call
on a tired old mate in a tent
laid out in a box
with no money in the pocket
no fancy halo, no thump left in the old
ticker.
Mihi: Collected Poems (Penguin, 1987)
Tags: hone tuwhare, new zealand, poetry, twentieth century
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