Sonnet for Hattah
At Hattah,
all day by the Murray she sits to paint
where red
gums crowd the banks of a stolen river.
She thinks
of tomorrow’s canvas as evening shivers.
Colours
drain into the ground until the brush is faint.
As the river
shares its flow between the crops
the red gums
wait for floods to float their seeds,
drop
branches for snags where Blackfish breed.
She talks
with her strokes, painting until night drops.
She arches
her neck to see the tops of the trees
ribbons of
bark peel and merge with her hair.
In her mind
the crowns are scraping the sky’s girth
until
looking down into the bank of the river she sees
the bony
fingers of the gum’s roots are there
not reaching
up but clinging to the diminishing earth.
After Rachel Carroll, Hattah, 2011.[i]
[i]
Rachel Carroll, Hattah, 2011. See image at http://www.rachelcarroll.com.au/view_artwork.php?fotoid=101
