Overview
Listen to Ashleigh Young reading 'Guide'
This poem, recorded on 15 March 2014, is part of the Walk with Me: McCahon Series of events at Te Papa. Colin McCahon is one of New Zealand’s most celebrated artists. His sweeping multi-canvas work Walk (Series C) (1973) is, in part, an imagined walk along Muriwai beach with the New Zealand poet James K Baxter. Te Papa invited poet, artist, and curator Gregory O’Brien to select eight poets to write poems inspired by McCahon’s work: Bill Manhire, Dinah Hawken, Hinemoana Baker, Ashleigh Young, James Brown, Vincent O'Sullivan, John Pule, and Paula Green.
Guide
If a man picks up a branch that for years was a tall ship
and drags it into the sea, where it bobs uncertainly
then rights itself and rides away, he is our enemy.
If fresh water streams between two rocks, that is called paradise.
If a dark shape moves inside of a wave, that is a mysterious creature.
If a girl jumps off a high rock, even with knees bent diligently,
her legs will explode like two sticks of dynamite.
If she poses on the high rock, she is a Pania statuette, with a light bulb
coming out of her head.
If a boy walks to the top of the waterfall, he must come down it
in a tyre and climb out doing the victory clasp
for as long as the victory merits.
If you set out to find the river mouth, the others will slough away
until only you are walking. At night the head grows leaden
with the unconscious, the way a sky becomes ‘leaden with clouds’.
If a girl is lost, someone will walk a long way to get her.
If her hand is held all the way back, it will be a short walk.
A person will spend time looking out to sea as if it were
a vehicle rusting in a field
as other people’s dogs whip around them in happy confusion
their coats the colour of ventifacts.
If a waterfall no longer has water, it is a groove
that suggests a falling motion, just as this trail
suggests a walking motion
but if a person keeps walking until there is no more walk to take
they will no longer look forward to it, so will turn back.
© Ashleigh Young