Heemi - Hone Tuwhare

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

She wished us well: offered wheels
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 eye-balls.

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)