Two Poems
Paul Burgess
Ropes
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Some humans took the drying grass they found
and wove together thin and fibrous strands
to make a thicker rope of build so sound
it dragged the stones too large for naked hands.
And later ropes of ever-greater length
enabled crews to raise a giant sail
and gave our species spiders’ super strength
to find no cliff or wall too steep to scale.
But ropes would also serve as doorless keys
to binding beasts and making rivals slaves.
Our ropes have blemished many blameless trees
and hastened countless trips to shallow graves.
When humans find a tool to be of use,
they quickly find a means of its abuse.
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Previously published in Snakeskin (2025); due to be published in All the World’s a Page, an anthology from Quillkeeper’s Press, forthcoming 2026.
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Paul’s notes: ​​“I have thought a lot lately about the themes that found their way into this poem. Ropes, such a simple yet elegant piece of technology, felt like a good tool for tracing an innocent, simple beginning to a more ambivalent evolution. After writing and submitting no poetry for ten years, I have come back to formal poetry with a renewed love and deepened appreciation for its ability to compress so much meaning into so few words; the sonnet has especially become a vehicle for trying to express thoughts and feelings that might overwhelm me if I tackled them in prose.“
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A Rock Bridge Defaced
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Between the cliffs within this ancient gorge,
your hairy back of lichen, brush, and moss
bestows a gift that only eons forge:
a glimpse of gaps and eras that you cross—
a world before the hands of humans made
the Earth a monstrous quarry, rig, and mine.
But cuts reveal you’ve also felt the blade
of those who think they own each thing they sign.
The pelting rain and ice the wind has blown
have worn away some gashes on your face,
and words that knives have carved to last in stone
are smudges seasons’ cycles will erase.
A human’s span to you is but a flash,
and vandals’ hands will soon be dust and ash.
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Previously published in The Orchards (2025).
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Paul’s notes: “This poem was inspired by one of my many hikes in the Red River Gorge Geological Area about an hour from my Lexington, Kentucky home. The Gorge has some of the most astonishingly beautiful and unspoiled natural scenery in the Eastern U.S., an area with fewer dramatic landscapes than the Western U.S., and is especially notable for its gorgeous rock formations.
“One day, on finding vulgar and trivial carvings and graffiti on a beautiful arch, I felt an almost indescribable sense of loss and outrage as if I had found the original Mona Lisa with a drawn-on mustache and two glued-on googly eyes.“
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Paul Burgess is the sole proprietor of a business in Lexington, Kentucky that offers ESL classes in addition to English, Japanese, and Spanish-language translation and interpretation services. He has recently contributed work to Blue Unicorn, Light, The Orchards, Snakeskin, The Ekphrastic Review, and several other publications. Paul’s blog is here and readers are welcome to contact him via this link.
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