Australia

Our Earthern dish is seven parts water,
one part China, and a tiny bit japanned.
Its spread of foods is well-presented:
ice sculptures at both poles, and licking-salt
elsewhere.  Give me a lever large enough -
a cosmic fork or skewer - and I would take it
to a table:  its sherbert fizz of surf,
the creamy ice-cones of its toothy alps,
the spice of islands dotted here and there
like cloves jammed in an onion.  Turning
this common dish as slowly as a day, I'd taste
the sweet-and-sour river deltas, the swamps
about its world wide waist, all of which
smell fishy.  As do many  maps of Tasmania,
most of them in other places: forest fuzz
itchy with green pubic life.  Lastly comes
our smaller plate, single and tectonic:
our turf, or lack of it, our baked and gritty
crust, lightly watered, sifter dusted,
and sarcastic with its hints of eucalypt.
Its thousand mile creek tastes too salty,
its muddy waters barely moving, but
moving enough to stir a homesick heart.