The speaker looks back after ten years and realizes how much of his earlier life has slipped away. He can no longer say exactly when the purple apples ripened, when the forget-me-nots appeared, or when the ground doves filled the fields with their calls. Yet certain sensory memories remain vivid, especially the poinsettia’s red, “blood-red in warm December.”
That repeated image becomes the emotional center of the poem. He remembers fragments—honey-fever grass, the path where they fought off bees, the by-road with golden rose-apple threads—but not the exact timing. Some moments, though, feel preserved: skipping school to play with tops, feasting on blackberries, playing innocently in the flame-heart’s shade. The mood is wistful and tender, mixing the ache of forgetting with the warmth of what still glows in memory.