This landscape has the contours of my youth.

Its curves are mine and I belong in them.
Here I thrive, my stout roots tapering
Through flinty subsoil to bald chalk beneath.
Here I draw sap, which feeds me its vitality,
Heals with its memories, allows me breath.

If I am rooted, how is it I can walk
On roads and paths with their familiar dust?
How can I lift my feet? There should be pain.
My soles should scream like mandrakes with each step.
A paradox, but rooted in my most real world
There are no ties that bind me to the earth.

My body soars to harmonise with larks,
Suspended in a web of song above the harvest fields.
The drifting fluff of poplars guides me to the marsh
Where peewits forage, pens behind their ears,
And musk of water plants invades the air.
With sapphire damselflies I hover over streams
Whose schools of minnows swerve in arabesques,
Decorations on the tesselated strand.

This landscape has the contours of my youth.
I can lie upon its ploughed and grassy surfaces,
Take comfort from its folds, sink back my roots.
It is my bedrock and my bed.