Frank Oliver Call’s speaker keeps asking why he is drawn to simple natural things: the silver sound of spring water, clouds trailing across the sky, pine boughs singing all day. These are not idle questions. Each image pulls him toward something he cannot quite grasp. The water sings a song he cannot sing, the clouds drift toward an unknown land, and the pines hold a secret no poet has fully told.
The mood is quiet, wondering, and a little wistful. The speaker is not distressed—he is fascinated by a beauty that seems to promise meaning just beyond words. The “answer” in the title is never stated directly, but it seems to live in the experience itself: the pull of nature, the longing for something distant and mysterious, and the simple pleasure of lying still and listening.