Michele Fermanis-Winward: ‘Our Most Familiar Landscape’

Our Most Familiar Landscape

We remember its contours
before the storm of years
when nubile limbs flexed and pranced
our hips, deep sensuous inclines
flowing to mountain gullies

our breasts were firm to scale
pert and rounded handfuls
alas that land is lost
a terrain of sagging sand dunes
falls towards the waist

now legs ripple with veins and dimples
wrinkled, scarred and jointed with pain
of twisted toes like knotted roots
along eroded creeks
shoulders humped by time-worn spines

the mirror is a cruel geologist
mapping our changing landmass
she only reflects what is found today
does not see the country of our youth
that we invoke with every twinge and cramp.

Michele Fermanis-Winward