Resonance XII
It was raining hard
and that Friday night Lawrence said "what we need sometime is
an image of the Taieri River in flood". Such events are impossible
to arrange, and little did I know that sunday afternoon we would
be standing on the same hill as Baxter had over looking the brown
ponds that engulfed the plain below. It was still spitting pellets
of rain and the cold southerly cut straight to our skin as the
tussock lashed and the tripod rattled. The bursting patterns
of light through the clouds were sporadic and it took sometime
to wait for a pool of light to hit the water to shoot these two
images.
From Scroggs Hill
the vista is out over the small farms and dwellings of Allanton
across the flood waters to the dominating hump of Maungatua cutting
the skyline. It was from here that Colin McCahon also had his
vision of the land further out over the rain obscured-hills to
the right of the Maungatua.
Map of Brighton indicating where the image Resonance XII was taken from
enlarge map
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James K Baxter - Poem
references
The
Flood 1962 CP 263
From which the
farms were bare and small,
houses not even visible...
The fury of the
sky father.
and once with light rain still falling, stood
Above the Taieri plain, where the brown flood
had covered paddocks, sheds and fences.
She Who is Like the Moon CP
Pure
as the moon influences of torn cloud.
who floods the earth and sky and troubled water. |
