Two Poems
Paul Burgess

The Darkling Thrush’s Ear

You sense a change in winter’s deathly hush.

A voice appears to warm the frozen gloom—

the vibrant song of Hardy’s darkling thrush,

perhaps an antidote to thoughts of doom.

I’d also love to hear that hopeful song

and don’t intend to damage or destroy.

The awe I feel is just as deep and strong,

but what I hear aren’t hymns of boundless joy.

I hear impassioned cries of pain and lust—

the songs of creatures singing just to cope,

of birds that belt their tunes because they must

and sing of food and sex but never hope.

The darkling thrush’s song may hold less cheer

for those who listen with a thrush’s ear.

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Previously published in The Orchards (2024) and the anthology All the World’s a Page (2026)

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Paul’s notes: “This piece is not meant as a corrective to Hardy’s brilliant poem, one of my favorites and truly one of the finest in the language. Hardy’s speaker recognizes that the joyfulness of the thrush’s song is possibly wishful thinking.

“I’ve always been fascinated by communication and cognition within and across species and the ways in which we interpret the natural world; in some cases, we seem to anthropomorphize too much, but there are also many cases in which we vastly underestimate the similarities between our capacities and those of other creatures.

“The goal of this piece is not to discredit the idea that birds can sing joyful songs or to diminish the comfort those songs can bring us even if their purpose is not always joyful expression. I was mostly thinking about what the song would feel like or mean to another thrush and also thinking that, even if not an expression of joy or hope, the song in the middle of winter’s gloomiest day could still represent nature persisting, a creature doing what it needed to do in even the least pleasant circumstances.“

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Blue Notes

Those notes that some have said are shaded blue—

the flattened third inside a major run

or flattened fifth inside a minor one—

are partly why some music rings so true.

Their tapestry’s diversity of hue

reflects a life whose threads are rarely spun

in shades of purely night or purely sun

to fit within a single camp of two.

The tones insist that half a step away

from every joy there waits a lurking woe

but also tell us not to hold a grudge

against the motion since it’s best to sway

and ride those notes to harbors where they go

once fingers give the strings a little nudge.

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Paul’s notes: “This month’s theme inspired this piece.

“My tastes in music are pretty eclectic, but I have long enjoyed studying, teaching, and performing blues and jazz, and blues has always fascinated me with its artful blending of the minor and major. Blues guitarist have made especially great use of bends (the ’nudge’; of the poem’s conclusion), trills, and other techniques to blur the lines between the two, and this graceful movement’s bittersweet ambiguity (often involving ’half a step’ between two tones) has always felt aesthetically, emotionally, and philosophically satisfying to me.“

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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, The Road Not Taken, Light, Apricity, Star*Line, The Orchards, Snakeskin, Pulsebeat, and several other publications. Paul’s blog is here and readers are welcome to contact him via this link.

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Two Poems Paul Burgess

Two Poems
Paul Burgess