The Three-Legged Stool That Refuses to Tip
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| ©Modern Times |
The Three-Legged Stool That Refuses to Tip
In a hall not built of marble, but of arguments,
three voices took up residence—
not roommates, not rivals,
but necessary inconveniences to one another.
First: Legislative,
a many-mouthed creature in tailored suits,
stitched together from districts, disagreements, and dinner-table debates.
It speaks in drafts—ink still wet with compromise,
sentences folding like origami cranes that may or may not fly.
Its job is to imagine rules sturdy enough
to hold a country without cracking its knuckles.
Second: Executive,
a single spine wrapped in ceremony and deadlines,
carrying the keys, the codes, the consequence of “now.”
It does not write the script—
it performs it, directs it, sometimes improvises under pressure
when storms refuse to RSVP.
It signs its name not for poetry, but to turn suggestion into gravity.
Third: Judicial,
quiet as a library at closing time,
yet sharper than the paper cuts left by history.
It reads what was written and asks, “What did you mean?”
It holds a lantern to language,
peeling apart commas like forensic evidence,
deciding whether a promise still stands
or was built on sand in borrowed light.
They are not equal in shape—
one is a crowd, one a face, one a bench—
but equal in weight,
like stones placed carefully across a river
so no single step drowns the traveler.
Separation is not distance; it is design.
A triangle, not a ladder.
No branch climbs above the others
without the structure collapsing into a line—
and a line, as any child knows, falls over with the gentlest push.
So they check—a polite word for suspicion with manners.
The Legislative asks, “Should this be?”
The Executive replies, “I will try.”
The Judicial wonders, “Was this allowed?”
Each question a lock, each answer a key,
none allowed to keep both in the same pocket.
Because power, left alone, does not nap—it metastasizes.
Give the rule-maker a crown,
and laws begin to resemble mirrors.
Give the rule-enforcer unchecked reach,
and orders grow teeth.
Give the rule-interpreter final silence,
and meaning becomes a closed room with no windows.
Balance is not harmony; it is tension tuned like a violin string—
too loose, no music;
too tight, it snaps and lashes the hand that held it.
History whispers in footnotes and ash:
when one branch swallows the others, names change—
republic becomes regime,
debate becomes decree,
and citizens become audience.
So the stool stands on three legs,
awkward, deliberate, impossible to ignore.
Kick one away, and the sitter learns quickly
how gravity writes its own amendments.
Remember:
freedom is not a single voice shouting clearly,
but three voices interrupting just enough
to keep the sentence honest.
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