Robert Berry

   
 

Sleeping Horses

A star suspends on the rooftree of a big house,
looming bulk of all the history that’s lived here.

The chimneystack, once bronchial
warms no hearths tonight;

the neighbours are out in the bay streets
and I have only a slice of moon for company

till something fossicks leaves near me
then scarpers off to the huffing tread
of human life.

At the field gate by hill top farm
I snuff a lungful of sharp air

admiring the sleeping horses
like steamy frost sculptures

who dream so perpendicular to heaven.

 

 
   

Robert James Berry lives and writes in Auckland, New Zealand. His work has been widely published. His fifth collection Sun Music is available from Ginninderra Press (Port Adelaide: Australia).