Each month we will be featuring a guest writer and this month's contribution is from Robert Berry. Robert James Berry was born in Redhill, England in 1960, and was educated in the U.K., Ulster, and Scotland. Since 1991 he has lectured in English Literature and Language in England, New Zealand, and Malaysia. He currently lives and works in Selangor in West Malaysia. His poems have been published in poetry magazines and journals in the United States, England, Ireland, Scotland, New Zealand, Malaysia, Sweden, and Trinidad. Most recently his poems have been translated into German. He was a prize winner in the NST - Shell Poetry Competition. He is married to Ahila. He loves cats, especially his Siamese, Sheba, classical piano, and poetry.

LIGHTHOUSES

The peat bricks and
cleft wood
burn lavender

Tall
Shadows permeate the solitude

I continue to stoke the small blaze
Lever the firetongs
coax reticent wood
to crackle

A knot spits like a shooting star
extinguishes at my ankles

Out of the window
Over the water
are the rain-stained lights
of another country
The unaltering eye of the lighthouse
crabbed to land's end
In the condensation
With my index finger
I write your name
Fascinated
as the tall letters and arrowed heart drip

When the fire grows flames
The pane clouds
and my other country is folded away
under a wrapper of fog

Your companionable blink put out
I walk to my seat
and sit with winter

You can find more articles in the archive under Guest Writer's Corner