For my wife Lisa
At the Edge of the Maze
Thirty-six winters have weathered these walls,
our bones knit like roots where the old furnace calls.
The night hums with owls, coyotes carve their lament—
we’ve walked the maze’s last turn, its spiral spent.
Lucky, they’d say, that the world clings so close,
a house sealed tight where no ghost dares to coast.
Her arms loop my ribs, a fortress of breath—
the dark presses near, but it shrinks at her chest.
Impeachments may rage, headlines gnash and flare,
Kobe’s sky shattered, yet our roof holds air.
No leak in the tank, no crack in the seal—
the chaos outside is a storm we don’t feel.
When the heat clicks awake, pouring gold through the veins,
we laugh at the cold, at time’s rusted chains.
Let the earth spin its riots, let the stars fray—
we’ll go as we came: entwined, one last day.
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In gilded halls where pages fade to dust,
A man holds court, his wisdom frayed, and unjust.
No tome has touched his mind, no thought in train—
The past, a ghost he’s sworn to never trust.
“Let them eat tariffs!” smirks the king of deals,
As commerce twists into shadows of uncertainty.
He spins his gold from memes, tweets, and lies,
While history’s blade waits in silence momentarily.
Marie, her cake a myth of royal indifference,
Became a tool to topple her family.
Yet he, who scorns the script of fallen royalty,
Repeats her dance, blind to the guillotine’s advance.
Beware, oh crownless prince of hollow boasts,
The scales of time tip hard when mirrors host
The faces of the faceless, who, fed on air,
Made heads roll where hubris once tread the most.
The empty shelves of stores will groan with lessons bold:
Those who ignore the text will bleed the gold.
But as books stay shut, and commodity futures crack like glass—
A revolution’s hymn, forever retold, painfully, alas.
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The Unintended Flow
Writing Second Innocence that way just felt right—
no rigid stops, no bounds in sight,
just words that wandered, soft and slow,
a river’s path, the way to go.
I learned from that unbroken line,
a breath, a pulse, a voice divine,
and carried it to Trauma’s embrace—
not planned, but found, a kind of grace.
I never force, I never steer,
the writing speaks, and I just hear.
Intentions? Plans? They twist and break—
the truest art is not to make,
but listen, wait, and let it rise,
a shape unseen with mortal eyes,
until the words, at last, take flight—
and what was hidden comes to light.
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How Dolly Sees God
In tales of old—Abelard’s ache, Vladimir’s vow—
love’s ledger lists names etched by time’s stern hand.
Yet Tennessee hums a softer truth somehow:
Carl and Dolly, roots in silent, sunlit land.
Six decades spun like chords from a twanging string,
a melody half-hidden, veiled from the stage’s glare.
No spotlight stained their quiet, steadfast thing—
just two hearts thrumming hymns only hills could share.
Twenty-eight words, a breath to cradle the end,
then three minutes, twenty-eight of steel-stringed grace.
The world leaned close, but grief refused to bend—
her sorrow’s stave was written in a private space.
*“He rests in God’s arms now,”* her voice, a psalm,
each note a balm, each pause a sacred veil.
Fans flocked with flowers, yet she held the calm—
a love too vast for headlines to unveil.
Freedom, she knows, is shedding shame’s tight cloak,
the weight of wounds that whispers *not enough*.
Love is the anthem where self-doubt’s chains broke—
a lullaby that lifts through valleys rough.
And God? The dawn where both entwine as one:
the grace to flawed and fervent hearts restored.
Not throne or flame, but soil, stream, and sun—
the peace her Carl found, cradled by the Lord.
So let the world dissect her guarded skies—
she tends a garden where the soul takes wing.
In silence, God is neither question nor guise,
but the quiet strum of forever… still listening.
Read more of Ron’s poetry on his Substack page.