The ghost of James K Baxter

I talk to you as if we would have been friends.
I picture you with long hair, long beard, no shoes and sleeping in an oilskin on a park bench. I’ve been reading about Jerusalem. With its dirt path that runs beside the church. I am trying to conceive how time has grown the weeds.

You persisted with poverty in a way that threatens to destroy me.
I don’t believe in the God
that drove you to the river
but I pray as I walk my way
back to Wellington.

There was an exhibition at the portraiture gallery.
A murderer painted you.
There was an entire wall dedicated to your wife.

I talk to you as if we would have eaten chestnuts together.
James, the muse is leaving me. I feel it like a dwindling fire.
What should I do?

I thought of you with my clothes in tatters.
Why go on,
when the rafters need repairs
and the walls have holes and the wind
is louder than thoughts.

I would like to visit you someday,
when I have something more
to say.

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This poem is in my as yet unpublished poetry book, Wild Altar. I am currently searching for a publisher for it, do you have any suggestions where my work could find a home?

Wild Altar is a book of New Zealand poetry. It contains poems about art, love, meditation and magic. There are poems about sleeping in carparks, getting lost in forests and sailing between islands. There are hard moments when I pry under the rug, where we New Zealander’s love to sweep our darkness. All encircles the landscape of Aotearoa. All illumes what it is like to live here.