The Light

By ROBERT BEROLD

 

A boomslang stretches out
to probe a nest. A cloud of birds
surrounds it, frantic.

It slinks across to eat the eggs,
swerves back into the foliage,
cuts the light in two.

*

A baboon barks on the ridge.
The sun is blind and white,
the sunspots flare and plunge.

In the mountains the radio signal comes
and goes. Scraps of torn cloud glitter.
Light. Sky covering sky. Wind.

*

The terraces were made many years ago,
cut straight to irrigate lucerne.
You can see their lines on the aerial map.

They are covered with thin blue flowers
that close up when the light goes.
Shreds of flayed clouds colour the sky.

*

On the highway to Karatara,
on golden wires, the swallows
sit flat folded at the end of day.

At the turnoff to the third gate
the light is so intense
the insects blink.

*

The light goes down in thick air.
We’re alone in the long together
nights and days.

Who can explain
how beauty works, except to say
—here—move over here.

Robert Berold has published four collections of poetry, a memoir of a year spent in China, and a biography of the pioneering Lesotho farmer JJ Machobane.

Click here to purchase Issue 04

The Light

Related Posts

Gray Davidson Carroll's headshot next to the cover of The Common Issue 28.

Podcast: Gray Davidson Carroll on “Silent Spring”

GRAY DAVIDSON CARROLL
Poet Gray Davidson Carroll speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about their poem “Silent Spring,” which appears in The Common’s fall issue. Gray talks about poetry as a way to witness and observe the world and how we experience it, and how it’s changing.

February 2025 Poetry Feature: New Poems by Our Contributors

MARC VINCENZ
Oh, you genius, you beehive, / you spark, you contiguous line— / all from the same place of origin // where there is no breeze. // All those questions posed … / take no notice, the image / is stamped on your brow, even // as you glare in the mirror, // as the others are orbiting

Excerpt from The Math of Saint Felix

DIANE EXAVIER
I turn thirty-two / the sky is mostly cloudy / over my apartment / facing Nostrand // and all my parents are dead // I am rolling my hips / toward death in a dying / city on a planet dying / just a touch slower than me // and one sister jokes we only need thirty more years