“The Bare Arms of Trees” by John Tagliabue

So I was reading through Garrison Keillor’s compilation of poems (Good Poems) this evening, and I came across a poem in his section on failure. Be warned: it has the capacity to literally kick straight through her chest and bruise your soul!

Sometimes when I see the bare arms of trees in the evening
I think of men who have died without love,
Of desolation and space between branch and branch,
I think of immovable whiteness and lean coldness and fear
And the terrible longing between people stretched apart as these 
branches
And the cold space between.
I think of the vastness and courage between this step and that step
Of the yearning and fear of the meeting, of the terrible desire
held apart.
I think of the ocean of longing that moves between land and land
And between people, the space and ocean.
The bare arms of the trees are immovable, without the play of
leaves, without the sound of wind; 
I think of the unseen love and the unknown thoughts that exist
between tree and tree
As I pass these things in the evening, as I walk.