Poem – Harry Ricketts

Posted on May 30, 2017 by NZ Books

Anzac Day, 
Fields of Remembrance, Wellington, 2017

Lines of short, white crosses curve over Salamanca Lawn, some with a plastic poppy, all a tomahawk shadow. Halls and Robinsons occur surprisingly frequently. Here’s a Rangi, a Herzog, a Schmidt. Many Smiths. This warm, autumn afternoon, the cemetery-illusion (over three thousand war dead from the Wellington region, from 1914 up through 1917) almost does the trick: to feel the waste, the years drying tears. A man stops his dog cocking its leg; a girl cartwheels, falls. The sun starts to slide behind Tinakori Hill; the dark is invading Anderson Park.

 

Harry Ricketts

Posted in Poem
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