Dry Trees

As trees turn crisp and bare and dry,

it must mean

that there must be a well somewhere-

or an oasis, even.

I’ve tried washing out these hard knots of worry

but they’ve too readily found a place.

But why wouldn’t they? I’ve been loose and idle and careless.

Casual, tempered, abstracted.

Poor things, where would they go?

They’ve settled deep,

below the rivers, the ripples, the reefs,

the weed, the eels, the big sea

of lazy dreams, unfinished feels; but this stream

runs so bare, and the rocks are fringed by flowers,

so wild, so wilted, so wasteful.