Melancholia and the Age of Varnish

The small car, the crash,

the back flip she did

on impact,

into the rear of a carraige

on a country road, where a

vague wave of red sadness

came over her

on that day in that year.

He pushed forward, more a follow through,

into water, dark, blue, without chill,

where he waited, shining, moonlit,

at the bottom of the lake.

He saw it as a problem to solve-

She saw nothing, just a feeling

of what happens.

Nothing in her life acted as a clue.

He lay in a deerbed of sea oats, hearing

the title of this poem in his head.

He walked along side her as she spoke

the words, "varnish a little coat of."

"Vanish was the new word," he thought,

at the bottom of the pond.  "Vanish

will be a wipe, an artificial moment

of doubt, the veneer on the next worry."

Down the path from the pond,

beyond the parked small car,

they lay together in a

small pine grove, listening

to trees trusting the wind.

In the distance great white

windmills articulated the

answer in sway that kept coming-

neither this way nor that-

just in arc.