[thinking of Tony Fomison, 1939–1990] Only the two cops will rememberand they’re not talking. ‘Move off, lady’, one came at mewhen I got between you and his baton. They had you across the back of a carduring those ridiculous timeswhen streets were filled with bootsgreat coats, shields, helmets and jumbo bins.The Red Squad screamed round in circleslooking for all our world like some bizarre voodoo ritegone mad in Newmarket. We were the same age but you were smalland wizened. A boy with an old face,seeming
at least in this scene to need protection. I threw myself across your bodyhoping not to crush you with my weightand they stopped, not daring quite to bash upa middle-aged virago articulate with rage. How did it end? Did we go off together? I know I berated Meurant on his Khyber Passcorner playing commander. I took photosbut where are they? I can’t rememberand now neither can you. Perhaps there’s a note somewhere herein a diary or a book, a box in a cupboardbut who cares?
Who are wein the confusion of repeated histories? The fire in the cave still burnsand out there in the darkness, your facelifted to the night starsknows ‘the soul is at homein its own strange dream’. Taken with kind permission from the recently published collection Blue Is a Cracked Vase in Memory by Riemke Ensing (Cold Hub Press, $33), available in selected bookstores nationwide. It includes poems from her previous three books along with more than 60y previously uncollected poems. Settings and subjects include Muriwai, Otago
Harbour, Colin McCahon, and poor old Tony Fomison.
Tony Fomison, Riemke Ensing, Blue Is a Cracked Vase in Memory, Cold Hub Press, poetry, Newmarket, Red Squad, Meurant, Khyber Pass