By RAHN ADAMS
The setting sun shone / in the window / of the great room / with the cathedral ceiling.
Every day at dusk / we walked together / past this bright house / on Fairmont Street
As we headed back / from the beach strand / or the tennis courts / on the island.
From the water tower / to the waterway, / the unmarked pavement / ran south to north,
Letting twilight die / a golden death / in the highest peak / of this vacant second home.
MORGANTON, N.C. (Feb. 11, 2026) — So many things are happening right now, it’s as if this second week in February is the nexus of alternate universes. Take three seemingly unrelated events this week that are alike only in terms of spectacle:
The week started on Sunday with Super Bowl LX — an unremarkable football game whose two halves book-ended a most remarkable halftime show. Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny’s extravaganza was 13 minutes of cultural education.
On Tuesday, the Buddhist monks that Timberley and I have been walking with in spirit for the past two months reached Washington, D.C., on their 2,300-mile, 108-day Walk for Peace. They are there today and tomorrow before catching a bus in Annapolis, Md., for Fort Worth, Texas, where the peace walk began. I’ll write more about it next week.
And today is the start of Speedweek 2026 at Daytona International Speedway in Florida — a really, really big deal for folks who like stock car racing. They’ve had three months of nothin’ since the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race at Phoenix Raceway in Avondale, Ariz., last fall. The single-ring circus gears up again starting today.
Back in the 1990s when Dale Earnhardt was The Intimidator and won the last few of his record seven NASCAR Winston Cup championships, Timberley and I would regularly meet up with her dad, Nat Gilliam, at the races in either Darlington, S.C., or Rockingham, N.C. Nat worked with Earnhardt’s race team, representing one of its sponsors, Western Steer/Mom ‘n’ Pops, Inc., of Claremont, N.C. He even got us into the Daytona 500 once.
Continue reading Bad Bunny, Buddhist Monks, and Daytona Speedweek ’26: Signs of Changing Times
By RAHN ADAMS
As of this morning, / the bees were still buzzing / in one of our hives / like a well-built Belvedere.
On my knees, I pressed / my ear to the box / and heard the happy thrum / of a thousand little lives,
Clustered against the cold, / generating heat / to protect that one life / at the center of their being.
Why the other hive died / we probably won’t know. / Too much stress / and too spread out, we guess.
We should have robbed it — / taken all of the gold / to make them work / harder for their precious honey.
BOONE, N.C. (Feb. 4, 2026) – Yesterday when we left our house to drive into town, we saw three beautiful girls playing in the snow at a neighbor’s house. They seemed to be in much better moods than the last time we saw them outside.
That occasion was a few days before Christmas, and, once again, we were in the car but headed in, not out. The girls caught our attention that time because they were frantically running toward us as we parked in our driveway. “Hey!” I said. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”
Startled to see us, the three large does — that is, female deer — veered away and cut through the yard, then around the house into the woods. As we climbed the stairs to our front deck, Timberley spotted what was wrong. “Look,” she said. “Over there. It’s hurt.”
It was a good-sized buck, a young spike that was half lying, half sitting in a ditch across the hollow from our house. One hindquarter was injured, keeping it — or I should say him — from even standing, much less running. But he could hold his head up, and he was alert.
Continue reading Oh, Deer! Not How I Thought This Sad, Sad Tale Would End
In anticipation of spring
By RAHN ADAMS
Three boys tossed a ball / in the vacant sandlot, / an excuse just to talk / and to laugh until they burst.
The eldest one quit first, / taking his new ball with him, / forcing the others / to play with another horsehide.
As hard as those two tried, / the old spheroid didn’t feel right. / One boy joked, / “This ol’ pill must be hexed.”
The younger fielder left next, / not wanting to go, / but he was called away / without any choice in the matter.
Deciding not to be a lone batter, / the last boy elected / just to play catch with the sky / until it rained or worse.
By RAHN ADAMS
BOONE, N.C. (Jan. 28, 2026) – The Hibriten High School pep band was the coolest group of musicians this 11-year-old kid had ever heard in person. It was three more years before I would hear Maynard Ferguson’s screaming MF horn in the old concert hall at App State. But that’s another story for another day.
Mom would take me and my little brother to our older brother’s JV basketball games — Mom was the hoops fan, not Dad — and then we’d stay for the two varsity contests that followed. That’s when the pep band played, starting at halftime of the girls’ game. Those guys and gals playing horns and banging drums were so cool. Whether it was that first year or the next, I remember admiring Joe, the trombone player, in particular. I wanted to play just like him.
Coming from a white evangelical background — a really strict fundamentalist Christian household — I didn’t get to listen to rock or even pop music openly at home. Now, I was in the elementary school band — I played trombone, like Joe — but the only good songs we played were easy arrangements of Tijuana Brass tunes. My only other link to popular music was a wired earbud and a cheap AM transistor radio that picked up only the local radio station. Top Gun, as WKGX in Lenoir was called back then, played country-and-western music, and went off the air every day at sunset.
But that’s when the pep band started heating up on those cold winter nights in that crowded and stuffy high school gym. During breaks in the games, the band stood at one end of the home stands and played neat songs like “Windy” by the Association and “Up, Up and Away” by the 5th Dimension, as well as two jazzy tunes by Chicago, the original rock group with horns. I also remember a Cliff Nobles Philly soul hit called “Horse Fever” (not to be confused with “The Horse,” which every other pep band played), as well as the first Hibriten fight song that was actually App’s “Hi-Hi-y-ike-us” (mountain talk for “Hi, how do you like us?”).
Continue reading ‘Waiting for the Break of Day, Searching for Something to Say’
In memorium
By RAHN ADAMS
That ride on the golden escalator / was already at its lowest level. / It should have been shut down / once and for all, God damn it.
The golden tower never was as tall / as it was said to be. / The sales pitch was just a big lie, / selling fools timeshares on the 13th floor.
Now they want golden parachutes / to break their falls. / The rest of us are left waiting for an elevator, / or we’re forced to take the stairs.
The golden doors suddenly slide open; / we can go up or down. / Two good and pretty elevators can carry us, / but both are covered in blood.
in memory of Thich Nhat Hanh
By RAHN ADAMS
Across the sacred expanse, down the brown hill, through the leafless trees, / past the pilot-less autos and bystanders, / I glimpse the monks of peace, / Walking, walking, walking…
Their saffron robes attract the sun like dreamcatchers do the moon, / leaving the highway and heading down, / then up and around the road’s curves, / Walking, walking, walking…
Like a slow roller-coaster, a burnt-umber line of linked cars, / the monks climb to the summit as if being towed or driven / by some higher power that is always / Walking, walking, walking…
Past all the lonely people standing with outstretched arms, / asking for alms with smartphones / from mindful men who breathe and walk / for themselves, for us all, and for a world of hope and healing.
By RAHN ADAMS
MORGANTON, N.C. (Jan. 21, 2026) – When was the last time you drove anywhere unfamiliar without using GPS? Really? It was that long ago? Jeepers.
Despite the frigid temperatures Friday morning, Timberley and I hopped into Pearl, our little white car, and drove somewhere we’d never been – 85 miles and 90 minutes away – and we didn’t get lost a single time. That’s a miracle when I’m behind the wheel, even with GPS.
Two-and-a-half hours later, we returned home by a different route, again on unfamiliar country roads through Cabarrus, Rowan and Iredell counties without making any wrong turns. And this time we weren’t in a hurry, so we were able to enjoy our ride through all that fallow but beautiful farmland.
It was a win-win situation. I trusted the disembodied voice giving us directions, and I didn’t even have to think. I hadn’t had to do any serious pre-trip planning by consulting road maps, and I didn’t have to bother Timberley to fumble with her phone and plot our turns through Piedmont farm country.
More importantly, we didn’t have to take the wider but more congested interstate highways that most other motorists chose to travel between, say, Troutman and Kannapolis that day. We took the roads that at least appeared to be less traveled. So, you see where I’m headed here, right?
in memory of Kenneth Eric Adams
By RAHN ADAMS
Every fall and winter I go back / to 1976 and 1977 when I was 17, / a senior in high school, / big brother to a little boy / who suffered more than he deserved.
It had been the Bicentennial, / a year of celebrating our freedom; / but summer was over, / and on the 1st of October / the march toward January 17 began.
After I hung up the telephone, / all I could think to do / was run over to our little white church, / fall down at the altar / and pray for his cancer to be cured.
I wanted some sign from God / that he had heard my plea / for my brother to be healed, / and that he might survive the knives / and the fire and all that poison.
I flipped open my Bible / to the longest of the Psalms; / and my unaimed finger fell on the 17th verse: / “I shall not die, but live, / and declare the works of the Lord.” Yes!
But on the 17th of January / I learned that the promise I had read / referred not to my little brother / but to me, as it traded my heaven / for the hell of wait and see.
