By RAHN ADAMS
Up on a pedestal, / blue sky at his back, / a rifle in his hand, / he’s a stone-cold rebel yell,
Silent for good reason / about what he has seen — / death and destruction, / loyalty and treason.
Over his frozen shoulder, / the god of lost causes / grins down on his creation, / making it even colder.
By RAHN ADAMS
MORGANTON, N.C. (March 18, 2026) – Last weekend we attended the funeral of my wife Timberley’s aunt at a country church where I’d forgotten that my own kinfolk had been members long ago.
In the hillside cemetery next to the old church — established before the Civil War — I happened upon the graves of my maternal great-great-grandparents, my great-grandparents and other close kin.
This was in the Enola community about five miles from Morganton at the edge of the South Mountains. An old wives’ tale says that this community around Yellow Gap got its name — alone backwards— because it was so isolated and sparsely populated, and because there was nothing much to do there. It’s still that way.
Yes, my great-great-grandfather Sidney Poteet, the pater familias of one whole Poteet/Poteat clan in Burke County, and my great-grandfather Tom Duckworth, who had married one of Sidney’s daughters and moved our branch of the family tree to the Hopewell community closer to town, are both buried there at Pleasant Hill Baptist Church, even though they had been prosperous landowners and storekeepers in their respective sections of the county.
The fact that Grandpa Tom — all he was ever called around me — Granny Susan, and my great-uncle Dewey (who dropped dead at 31 while walking in the woods one day) were buried at Pleasant Hill and not at Hopewell Baptist Church or Salem Methodist Church did surprise me, but that wasn’t all.
Continue reading O Grandfathers, Where Art Thou? (Part 1 of 2)
From the mountaintop, / I surveyed the valleys below / and counted the towns / in that sea of trees.
“They all can be yours,” / he said with a glint in his eye, / “even that shining city / on the bright horizon.”
It was so tempting — / to suddenly be a man of the world, / wearing nice clothes / and working no more.
But I didn’t trust him, / this dude in the baggy blue suit; / or maybe it was how / he slicked back his hair.
“No, no,” I finally said, / “I’ll keep the lot I’ve been given / and do the best I can / as a simple, honest man.”
By RAHN ADAMS
SALEM, N.C. (March 11, 2026) – Yesterday I wrote more than a dozen paragraphs — around 750 words — about our lying president and the hypocritical evangelist who helped put him in office 10 years ago.
I trashed them both good — and I was only halfway done. But even writing that much wore me out.
So this morning I decided to trash that column and start all over — and to keep it simple this time.
One of our problems now is having to deal with the president and his men constantly “flooding the zone with shit,” as one stated years ago when this madness began. It’s overwhelming.
So today I want to address in simple terms just one thing that’s bothering folks — the idea that the war in Iran is the start of Armageddon, the last big battle prophesied in the Bible.
Even the aforementioned evangelist got in on the act last week by posting on social media his support of the attack that, among other things, killed 150 innocent schoolgirls in the Iranian city of Minab, nearly 700 miles south of Iran’s capital of Tehran.
By RAHN ADAMS
Were there two trees / in the storied Garden of Eden, / or was there just one?
The Tree of Life / and the Tree of the Knowledge / of Good and Evil:
One, a live oak; / the other, a sacred fig / for both food and shelter?
That’s my guess, / if the two trees were different; / so now riddle me this:
What kind of life / knows not wrong from right / and just exists in ignorant bliss?
By RAHN ADAMS
BOONE, N.C. (March 4, 2026) – This morning as I wake and check the news on my phone, I’m thinking about two people on the world stage — well, three, but that third guy kinda goes without saying these crazy days.
The third man — and, yes, all three are men — is Donald Trump, of course, who has now pushed the penultimate panic button of his putrid presidency in order to divert attention from his criminality and incompetence.
There’s only one more button for him to push, and I have no doubt that he will if given the chance. Do I have to tell you what that last button does? OK. It’s the one that blows everything up, figuratively as well as literally.
How would that be for a distraction? Nope, we won’t be voting for Democrats or sensible Republicans after that happens. But it’s what 77 million Americans apparently want, right?
Continue reading It’s the Second Coming (Not of Who You Think)
By RAHN ADAMS
Part I
(written before the war began early Saturday MLST*)
Donald Trump shits his britches, / and Franklin Graham merely giggles, / “Oh, just hold your noses, folks, / and pretend it’s chocolate pudding.”
The Donald puts his signature, / which looks like obscene squiggles, / on all the merch he sells, / like red MAGA hats, Chinese Bibles and white hooding.
On stage and behind the podium, / Don shimmies, shakes and wiggles; / if he didn’t play air-accordian so well, / you can bet the old Trumpster would sing.
The state of the onion is glassified, / the apple-polishing press corps signals; / his fragile ego’s a veil of tears, / and his id’s a mycologic no-good thing.
Donald Trump craps his pants, / and Stephen Miller giggles, / “Keep lying to those dumb [folks], sir; / they don’t know horseshit from hasty pudding.”
Continue reading SUNDAY VERSES: The State of ‘The Onion,’ Parts I & II (3/1/2026)
By RAHN ADAMS
BOONE, N.C. (Feb. 25, 2026) – I was mindlessly streaming one YouTube music video after another this past weekend, and I ran across an old song that I hadn’t heard in years but that has regularly come to mind in various contexts.
It was Eagles founding member Don Henley’s solo hit, “The Heart of the Matter,” from his 1989 studio album, The End of the Innocence. The album came out the year before Henley founded the Walden Woods Project, a nonprofit organization that has been near and dear to my heart since July 2012 when Timberley and I went there — to Walden Woods and Walden Pond near Concord, Mass. — for the first time. I had been accepted for the week-long Approaching Walden seminar for high school teachers. It was the best professional development of my career.
Having been an Eagles fan since at least the summer of 1977, which was not long after the band’s multi-platinum-selling albums Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975) and then Hotel California initially hit the pop charts and airwaves, I was hoping that during the week-long seminar at the Thoreau Institute, Henley himself might show up to greet us, especially since his band wasn’t on tour right then. He didn’t come around, wherever he was; instead, he sends me a fund-raising letter every year in December. Even though I know what it is when I see it in our post office box, I get a momentary thrill seeing Henley’s name on the return address.
Continue reading ‘I’ve Been Trying to Get Down to the Heart of the Matter’
By RAHN ADAMS
The legal battle was over / who owned the lot — / the benevolent developer / or the crusading islanders.
They’d already fought / over crossing the wide moat / that protected their castles / in the shifting sands,
And the king had won, / realizing his plan / to replace the drawbridge / with a high-rise, concrete span.
But Lot 1A was different, / being new dry land / that had built itself up / with each crash of ocean surf.
At the end of the day, / King Ed said, “Let it be so / that the people win. / Our crown will be this gazebo.”
By RAHN ADAMS
BOONE, N.C. (Feb. 18, 2026) – All week I’ve been intending to write this essay about the recently concluded Walk for Peace — the part of it where, not the rubber, but the bare feet of Buddhist monks and their Peace Dog met the road on their trek across the Bible Belt. That part of the mission officially ended last Wednesday.
According to the monks’ leader, the Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara of Fort Worth, Texas, an individual’s walk for peace by practicing mindfulness should never end. That person should seek this type of peace for the rest of his or her life. And if they keep trying to find that peace within themselves — that “inner child,” he called it — they will not have failed.
That was my own epiphany — the monks’ definition of peace — after seeing them in person with Timberley on Jan. 16 outside Mount Olivet United Methodist Church near Kannapolis, N.C. The historic church, with its own old cemetery, is located across the street from Carolina Memorial Park, which covers the entire hillside there.
According to the Find-a-Grave website, more than 28,000 individuals rest in peace on that sacred hill where we met the monks.
It was the 83rd day of their mission that had begun on Oct. 26, 2025. Distance-wise, they were almost midway through the 2,300-mile, 108-day walk from Bhikkhu Pannakara’s home temple in Fort Worth to the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. They officially ended the sacred walk with a peace rally at the Lincoln Memorial last Wednesday on Day 109. On Days 110-112, they visited Annapolis, Md., and returned to Fort Worth by bus.
Continue reading ‘Have You No Sense Of Decency, Sir, At Long Last?’
