This was even better,
a full stop privacy.

It was there. There,
in the middle of the vineyard

stark in the midday sun.
Like a hangman’s dream

it loomed into her consciousness
taking over her compliant existence.

Her adult life was a quest laid out
by a higher order, or so it seemed.

Lack of control over so many circumstances
and nothing to help.

Her well of ideas floundered every time.
That was one of her problems

lack of freedom to think and find a way
to explain one’s particular existence.

And a way to accept and choose one’s part,
a player in the amazing dramas of life.

Thoughts like these flitted through
her consciousness, escaped and returned.

Who does not search for explanations
the existentialist question about life

and reality of existence, one’s particular life
and the why and wherefore of everything?

Hers was a mind that hungered for answers.
She thought that everyone else had the answers.

She sat under the tree, shaded
by its dark gaunt branches…

she sought trees with this kind
of architectural growth…

a Beckett tree, she privately mused.

Slowly, she drank from the bottle
Clutched tightly, in her tired hand.