The poem begins in the woods, with three witch hazel trunks that have spent a century straining toward the same thin patch of light. Over time they have grown into one another, and the ground swells above their shared roots. It's a quiet picture of how shared effort and close quarters can fuse separate things into one.
Then the poem cuts to "back home," where someone, addressed as "you," measures their own outstretched arms with a tape. The link is left for us to make. The gesture echoes the trees' reaching, and it makes us wonder about our own limits and what we stretch toward.
The speaker never says what they feel, and the tone stays calm, observant and a little wondering. The mood is gentle and contemplative, with a hint of tenderness in the final image. The poem seems to suggest that people, like trees, are shaped by what they reach for.