b a r b a r a  f l e t c h e r: other poems


Shrinking

Slowly she is grinding herself away
through the lift and shift of weights
the ascension and fall of chest and knees,
limbs raised and lowered with concentrated precision.
She works with controlled movement
toward attrition.

Yesterday there were more beautiful purple grooves:
tributaries mapping the progress of shrinking skin,
plum-coloured striations marking
territory she once occupied.

She is shrinking. A plane
of chiseled flutes, of river channels
cut through glacier-worn hills,
of pink and corrugated flesh.
Of less.