Berry is a fine poet who reminds me of Wallace Stegner. He writes about nature, the passage of time, and the meaning of death. His later poems nearly all include a theme related to dying which he likes to describe a natural part of living and a natural and fearless passage.
The poetry most often uses nature as a theme. Berry likes to call the reader to observe a bird in a tree. Some of his poems rail against modern society, greed, and war. They can serve as a quiet meditation bringing calm to world moving faster and faster away from finding simple pleasures in rain or soil.
In a time that breaks
in cutting pieces all around,
when men, voiceless
against thing-ridden men,
set themselves on fire, it seems
too difficult and rare
to think of the life of a man
grown whole in the world,
at peace and in place.
But having thought of it
I am beyond the time
I might have sold my hands
or sold my voice and mind
to the arguments of power
that go blind against
what they would destroy.
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