The speaker begins at a moment of emotional breaking: “my heart’s string / snapped.” In response, the speaker sets out alone on a ten-day walk along a ridgeline trail. The poem is spare, and much of its feeling comes from that solitude and the long, repetitive days of walking. The speaker is not trying to fix the hurt quickly; they are carrying it through a landscape.
What they notice is telling. The chestnuts are “in blight,” diseased and dying, and yet they “told me their story.” The blighted trees become quiet companions in loss—evidence that other living things also suffer and endure. The mood is hushed, weary, and reflective: grief turns outward just enough to meet a damaged world. The poem does not resolve the pain, but leaves the speaker walking, listening, and moving through it.