Homage
to Baxter
Resonance XV
Panorama of Aramoana from Taiaroa Heads
1994
This day the fog was either image-maker or breaker.
We had driven out to Taiaroa Head and the thick bank of fog was threatening
to engulf the whole scene as I raced up the slippery slope damp in morning
dew to the top of the hill. From the road at the bottom I had seen the
great clumps of lichen-encrusted rocks strewn across the tops and knew
that while this would provide a focus in the foreground it would also offer
a higher aerial view of the harbour. The fog drew through the neck and
over the hills just enough to show in the photographs. From the left is
the Peninsula down to Dunedin and Port Chalmers, across the harbour to
the tidal flats and sand spits of Aramoana. The black lines of the various
jetties and rock groynes strike across the water. In the foreground of
the third photograph the road can be seen and below this is the gun pit
and on the far right is Taiaroa Head. |
References:
At Aramoana 1966
CP 336
Boulders interrupt the long
Jetty from whose black asphalt
tongue the godwits fly...
where the sighing combs of water
talk under broken jetties, and the long
where the serpent current flows
out of the harbour gates, long-
flowing, strongly tugging at
the roots of the world.
The Kraken 1966
CP 335
Green flats of weed that Heaphy painted
Wait for the withheld kiss of the tide...
You who stroll on cliff-top boulders and
The abandoned gun-pit....
and watch how the kraken's wide
Blinding tendrils move like smoke over the neck. |
