I'm working on a book that has poetry within the text. Sometimes a poem
ends the paragraph and sometimes it does not. So I'm wondering how to
handle this in the text file without leaving it ambiguous.

Wally, could you provide a brief example? I don't do much with proofreading on PG, but I am a book publisher. If I saw an example in which the poem ends the paragraph and the poem does not end the paragraph, it would help. Are you saying that in some cases the poem is within the paragraph and the paragraph continues after the poem, or that the paragraph ends but the poem carries over to the next paragraph? I've seen both, and of course they're handled differently.

 

Anne