Rimutakas
For Stephen Oliver

Journeying through the Rimutakas,
a day after New Year's, I'm a passenger

watching closely: the hills.
In my head, a line comes back to me from

you: 'A soap-grey slate could landslip you off
a hair-pin...' Just that. It was here a few years

back I nearly did do that; too young to
know better, taking those left-lane turns

fast. Now, today, the hills are under
mist and this is not the Mangawekas,

but there's a sense of the universal to it all,
the animism of mountains: the landscape

of death. Baxter and Campbell knew it,
just like the trampers, the mountaineers...

I look on down to the valley floor,
and half-imagine a poet might well be doing a Kees

hiding out, pitching his tent below the stars,
losing all self, out here amongst the hills.

By Mark Pirie

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