Dave Bonta's poem is about learning to notice something small and easy to miss. Fairy bells are a woodland plant, and the speaker treats their "ringing" as a kind of quiet music you can only find if you slow down. You need the patience of an anchorite, someone who lives in silence, and the poem pairs the flower with other faint sounds of the forest: water trickling under rocks and a warbler's wheezy song.
The speaker's tone is attentive and gently reverent. Each stanza works like an instruction, telling us where to listen and look, until the flower comes into focus: a yellow-green bell that opens into a star. The ending shifts from beauty to change. The parts that made the flower what it was must fall away so that a scarlet "clapper" can grow. The mood is hushed and patient, with a quiet wonder at how nature renews itself without making a fuss.