Mike Stone's poem starts with darkness and quickly turns it into a kind of mirror. In the speaker's picture, darkness swallows up our truth (the Latin "veritas") but shows back our vanity ("vanitas"), much as our thoughts on a long, lonely walk give us a bent version of reality rather than the real thing.
From there the poem becomes a string of uneasy comparisons. We admire gnarled trees but shy away from gnarled hands. We find the lonely willow lovely but not the lonely poet. A flaw in a diamond charms us, yet a flaw in a soul does not. Even emptiness is welcome in a clear sky and feared in death.
The speaker sounds puzzled and a little sad, not angry. "I've often wondered" gives the poem a quiet, thoughtful tone. The mood is reflective and slightly bleak, as the poem points out how readily we find beauty in nature and objects while turning away from the same qualities in people.