Overview
Listen to James Brown reading 'Ghosting'
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.
Ghosting
A pale day, lightning
when you walk among it.
Sometimes I give in
and try to find you.
I trace and retrace my steps.
But you are nowhere.
‘Go away,’ I tell you.
It’s one scene
after another, one
sheet of paper after
another, one
point after another
point. Then
I am beside myself.
You are beside me
then.
© James Brown