EGYPTIAN PRINCE DEFINES THE ROMANS

See them turn the silence in their soil
upside-down
with sticks and moonlight.

Wide they go, with seeds 
in the flat of their hands, bending 
dusty, moth-gray elbows.

With tilted eyes and little pointed tools.
they pull themselves atop a mountain.
Their boots dislodge the minor rocks
that make the sound of mallets.

Even the least of them is brash,
walking over what is high and old,
always thinking it lower than it is.

The gods they’ve made are like them— 
impulsive, ruthless, predictable 
only in their bend to what is deft and final.

Any one of them would break 
the ordered world 
for love or retribution.

Patricia Nelson is a retired attorney embarked on a second career of writing poetry. She has studied for many years with the groups of Neo Modernist poets who gathered around Lawrence Hart and John Hart in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her most recent book, Monster Monologues, was released by Fernwood Press in 2025.