works page james berry

<span style="font-family: Arial;">Dr Robert James Berry</span><span style="font-size: 120%;">
</span><span style="font-family: Arial;">A collection of poetry...</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial;">THE SOUND OF RAIN<span style="font-size: 120%;">
</span>
recalls home.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial;">My finger,
Writing on the wet window
The same letters our fathers taught us</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial;">has moved on,
and sketches the road-side shrine
where a Supreme God resides.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial;">Walking out of doors
Wearing skin leavened by the sun,</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial;">My tongue erodes into the
Shrill orient of my neighbours
lolling at the fence,
Who greet me, and ignore me.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial;">With the evening light
Mosquitoes, vampires of the hot season
Rise up,
To sip my sweet foreign blood,</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial;">Toads belch to their beloved's,
Fat divas of the drains.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial;">Under a low white moon
The padi sings of its home,</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial;">A song that bites sharper than the
Cruel steel knots of this fence.
</span>