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.