Trudell is an independent scholar with a bachelor's degree in English literature. In the following essay, he discusses the theme of sexual desire, particularly fervent, middle-aged female desire, in “Pine” and throughout Mosquito and Ant.

“Pine” is a poem about frustration, longing, and desire and their consequences. The speaker aches for her lover, John, but he is unavailable to her, and his letters leave her fingers “cold” and insensible—without feeling—despite the fact that they send “so much blood to the chest.” Because she cannot have him, and because she has a desperate desire to feel something, she finds ways to procure secondary, or indirect, feelings instead. The speaker compares herself to a pine tree, for example, going so far as attempting to dress in the color of a pine in order to express the other meaning of the word: longing and languishing from that longing...