by Alan Dugan

    The trees in time have something else to do

    besides their treeing. What is it.

    I'm a starving to death man myself，

    and thirsty， thirsty by their fountains but I cannot drink

    their mud and sunlight to be whole.

    I do not understand these presences that drink for months

    in the dirt， eat light，

    and then fast dry in the cold.

    They stand it out somehow，

    and how， the Botanists will tell me.

    It is the "something else" that bothers me，

    so I often go back to the forests.