On Looking for Models by Alan Dugan

It's been a long time since I've posted something from Dugan, one of my favorite American poets. He's always served me well. Here's a bit of an "inspiration" poem that I particularly like of his.

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.