Untitled Document

The Crossing

Robert James Berry

You've shot tidal races to a skeleton coast
left the desert behind, red dunes the wind chisels forever

walked blue valleys pandered by rain
till the earth becomes brown, the brown of roaches.

Where bush thins, and the sun's big bad eye
blares overhead

are mountains milled flat
so just stub ends and buckles of time remain

for the sun to scribe long shadows over.
Quarrelsome children once trod here –

no longer. Their bones are talismen to pocket
from the earth's burnt madness

a saltpan of visions. The oldest river is
an ochre vein severing the past.

Only moon music sings,
innumerable stars whir over emptiness.

Robert James Berry lives and writes in Auckland, New Zealand. His work has been published widely. His first collection Smoke appeared in 2000 (UPM Press, Serdang, Malaysia: 2000). Since 2000 he has published Stone (Ginninderra Press, Canberra, Australia: 2004) and Seamark (Ginninderra Press, Canberra, Australia: 2004). He is currently preparing his fourth collection, Sky Writing, for publication.