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for Bee Whisenant

By RAHN ADAMS

Death and resurrection are funny words / to use when referring to honey bees — / how the hive declines in late autumn, / then comes back to life in early spring.

Workers live only six weeks in summer; / drones, two months if they don’t mate; / the solitary queen, two to five years, / because she’s the most important bee.

Or is she? Sure, she lays all the eggs, / but she had to tango with several guys / on her mating flight high up in the skies / in order to be the egg machine she is.

And the thousands of poor worker girls? / They do everything to keep the hive / clean and fed and safe and humming; / they literally work themselves to death.

So, the beehive stays alive all year; / it dies and resurrects itself over and over / in the expendable lives of its workers, / who — no doubt — are what the buzz is all about.

By RAHN ADAMS

RUTHERWOOD, N.C. (April 1, 2026) — I’m embarrassed to admit that I nodded off Monday evening during the second hour of Henry David Thoreau, the Ken Burns- and Don Henley-produced documentary about my favorite philosopher.

Then, last night during the conclusion of the long-awaited PBS presentation, I was so tired from helping wife Timberley plant four new bare-root roses yesterday afternoon that I needed to rest my eyes again midway through the hour-long show — or at least that’s what I claimed.

But Timberley is no fool — not even on April Fool’s Day — so she woke me up both evenings as soon as she saw that my eyelids were closed for more than a second. She knew how much I had been looking forward to the documentary and that I wanted to be awake for its over-the-air premiere.

Continue reading The Nights Thoreau Spent in Our Living Room

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun. (Sonnet 130)

By RAHN ADAMS

When you look at a picture, / what do you feel first? / The colors? The lines? / A brain tickle? A thought burst?

What about the artist, / what they had in mind / when they whet their brush / with the tastiest art they could find?

Or is your take on a painting / all that really matters, / not the painter’s intent / nor the way their paint spatters?

Is art simply like beauty — / in the eye of the beholder? / Is it a silent meditation / or a transaction much bolder?

Me? I can’t answer that / because I’m married to my art. / I’ve learned to be quiet / and just trust that sweet heart.

By RAHN ADAMS

MORGANTON, N.C. (March 25, 2026) — Last week I posed several questions that I promised to answer today: Should my “Southern heritage” — or anyone’s, for that matter — be preserved as something honorable? Should Confederate monuments, like the one on the Old Courthouse Square here in Morganton, stay or be moved? And were Rebel soldiers heroes or villains, or were they both at the same time?

As it turns out, my final answers weren’t all that hard to formulate. I got a little help from my friends — from my wife and writing partner, Timberley; from a former teaching colleague who also happens to be Timberley’s distant cousin; and from another old friend who offered a practical take on that last question.

Last week I had discovered that my maternal great-great-grandfather, John W. Duckworth, served from May 1861 to the end of the Civil War as a Confederate private in Company E of the N.C. 16th Infantry Regiment. Known as the Burke Tigers, the company fought in all the major battles from 2nd Manassas (Bull Run) to the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse in April 1865. His name appears on the Morganton monument.

Continue reading O Grandfathers, Where Art Thou? (Part 2 of 2)

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.

Continue reading The Last Temptation of Donald Trump

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)