Two poems - takahē

The Makeover

A mild evening walking late
to my tent, almost casually,
as if this was already my life.

Another good man has died. There’s
nothing casual about packing
what I need to walk alone

into places I fear, even as I look
forward to the sublime.
My first night in the tent in a friend’s

garden, sheltered on soft grass—
like a warm bath, when later everything
will be cold as mountain streams.

But that is all ahead. For now,
I try it on like a new hairstyle
and outfit, and over time

I will be that person, tramper,
setting up, packing down, boiling water
for coffee, eyes like a hawk’s toward

the mountain pass. Not standing on the lawn
youtubing how to put up a
drop X-Mid 2P lightweight tent,

then waking in it, to sparrows and starlings
and two farm workers in the stony paddock
next door discussing what to do next.

Those You Carry

Another walker has died on the trail
alone, crossing a river. This news

like an ancient myth you feared as a child.
So many places to face death on the trail.

Not ‘Nature’, not ‘Landscape’. That plank
over a ravine with no handholds. That path

fallen into chaos and river swirl. No gentle
hike along a gravelled track. No guarantee

of direction. I had wanted certainty, instructions
to follow. Instead, this choose your own

adventure; if you do this, here is the
outcome. It’s never sure if you

will reach the treasure, only if you’re
able to learn, retrace, begin again.

My daughter tells me, ‘If you drown,
I’m going to be so angry with you.

I won’t even be sad. I’ll be angry
for years.’ I tell her, ‘I’m scared

of the rivers, too.’ Is it some pitting
of yourself against the tungsten cliff

of fate? That cliff which bars you
from your beloved? Is it some taunting

(then take me!)? Is it some balm of fear
and exhaustion to lay over wounds,

even ones you didn’t know you carried?

Jillian Sullivan recently walked the Te Araroa Trail, South Island. Her thirteen published books include creative non-fiction, novels, short stories, and poetry. Her latest book is Map for the Heart: Ida Valley Essays (Otago University Press, 2020). She lives in Central Otago.