He suffered a private madness,
the question “What am I doing here?”,
always lurking, clinging,
An affliction unrevealed
to others, friend or otherwise,
a boring, trite obsession.
Corn and wheat sped by,
muddled worries interrupted
by a solitary figure in sunflowers,
Shabby, in dark hat and overcoat,
looking, eye level, at a single flower,
staring, in turn, at the sun —
A half-second snapshot
instantly replaced by more
corn, wheat, sunflowers.
“What is he doing there?”,
he thought, knowing it
was already unknowable,
Knowing he was neither
bored nor offended by a
worthy but unanswerable question,
Knowing that he was,
finally freed
by the third person, singular.
Bluster & Absurdity 