The poem begins with a blunt question: "anger what good." The speaker seems to be fighting a feeling he can't use or shake off. Out in the garden, he decides the flower is angrier than he is, and so is the blood in the ground, which "rights & jerks" when his rake cuts into it. The image is violent and strangely alive, as if the earth itself can feel the blow.
Then the focus shifts to his daughter, who follows behind him pulling crocus flowers off the flagstone, where a sudden freeze left them. Her act is innocent, even playful, and it sits uneasily beside his raking. Both of them are disturbing small living things, one out of anger, the other out of childlike curiosity.
The mood is tense and bleak, but with a quiet tenderness in the final image. The dedication "For Rachel" suggests a personal poem, though the text alone doesn't tell us who she is. The poem leaves the speaker's anger unexplained, which makes it feel raw and unresolved.