The Guarded Bed Poem by Tor Magnor Solvang

A quiet word, a lowered eye,
When someone rich and high walks by.
A softer tone, a gentler hand,
For those who rule across the land.

The questions rise, a tangled thread,
What words were written, what was said?
A name, a trip, a shadowed past,
How long the tie was meant to last.

The public asks, the papers trace
The outline of a hidden face.
The law looks close, but takes its time,
To sort the reason from the rhyme.

Yet while the loud, hard questions burn,
There is a strange and solemn turn.
A private room, a guarded bed,
A gilded cage for one well-bred.

The average man might face a cell,
With steel and stone and noise and smell.
But for the great, a different ward,
A hospital, as his reward.

So status buys a different kind
Of cage for body and for mind.
And what was true, and what was fake,
Remains a question, for power's sake.