i need a plant i need a thing to take care of i need a little green brownspotted blackdirt growing quietness i need a sunlit dawn knowing my name filtered through a thin green window i need chlorophyll working its magic on beams of grassmade early morning dewdrop sweetmaking green i need the dark earth sucking water from a black crevice its black magic churning wormilled rockturned starblind darkness and cold into the opposite of dust i need the heat to blind me i need the dumb making to charge my coldened blood i need the dropturned leaves to turn again their faces to the windblown sun i need millions of tiny years summed up and burning out some unknown new growth into the air i need four hundred feet of dark red gnarled wood and needles glistening wetly on goldheaded branches hoisting themselves to the sky i need ten strong men to fail to bring you down old one i need the peace that comes with knowing something sacred holds still in the world i need your green tongues of flame to lick at old wounds stitching us together away from ourselves i need your brownbranching grasp to keep me from drifting off into unknowing terrible sleep i need to know the snake hanging from your branches i need to watch the dropping of flesh massful onto the ground from a height i need the gnawer at your root to strike a vein to quicken old brown stone to movement i need jeweleyed venom barking new greennesses into the bark i need a knocker of dark secrets hidden in the dark bark hiding a smallstone smoldering pearl in the knot i need that pearl held out in a hand like an offering i need the hand to be a plant's hand i need a plant i need a growing growler groaning toward heat and air i need a green thin stem surprisingly strong holding up the weight of a plain of fallow greennesses of creases and caresses of tiny worldmaking hardworking grandeur i need a singer of life crying forward into old roads covered over by dead trees i need the rasping of root in dirt i need the unfurling of fiddleheads to sing forth a new symphony i need fruits swelling large for the harvest i need yellow light shining through white bark i need juicecrush flowing waterlike through valleys percolating up through the ground i need springs bubbling sap into cabins of wood fought for by labor i need snow on the ground with shoots dotting the melting patches i need two leaves on a thin stalk shivering in moonlight i need robinsong warbling over the heads of small seeds sprouting to enliven their growth i need rings of woody material widening to push the ground out of their way i need new greennesses pushing out from the brown dark bark gnarled i need the robin to build its songfilled nest in a branchcrotch i need the fecundity of fungi on the branches i need quiet of the sunlight shooting through thousands of branched leaves quivering i need whisper at dawn i need burrows underground foxholes i need duff layers eaten through by worms i need brooks murmuring through crooks of roots i need small fish swimming in their schools at midnight i need oldnesses giving way to youngnesses giving way to oldnesses i need dapplegray yellowshot ashbark i need the crunch of dead leaves underfoot i need snowquiet deadbranch mourning i need those purple mountains majesty i need a walk between trees in the dark i need that moment when stopping to rest it suddenly seems that all the weary forestroads in all their meandering come to rest their heads at my astonished feet none of them needing more than me