Lack

            

I think that we will live apart as trees

Must live, not even in two woodlands near

Each other.  Maybe some stray autumn breeze

Will carry messages from sphere to sphere

And I will try to feel that roots and roots

Will almost touch — but dreams are only dreams.

Two distant trees will never flourish fruits

Produced together.  Even if clear streams

Flowed towards each other underneath our limbs,

The waters would not meet.  Those streams would prove

Our fated distance.  Limbo’s hymns

Will separate us at a doomed remove.

  The roots and streams and limbs show nothing less

    Than this:  our leaves will never manage yes.

Phillip Whidden