Four short scenes from a black locust grove, each looking closely at small signs of decay. The poem begins with a swarm of beetles hidden under leaves, then shows what they leave behind: leaves eaten down to their veins that rattle and hiss in the wind. Next comes a fallen limb that was already brown before the storm brought it down, a reminder that the damage was happening quietly beforehand.
The last stanza turns toward the speaker. A leafminer beetle lands on "my thinning scalp," and the poem quietly links the speaker's aging body to the grove. Judging by the tone, the speaker isn't alarmed. The observation is dry, even a little humorous, and the beetle seems to treat the speaker as just another part of the landscape.
The mood is calm and attentive, with a touch of melancholy. Nothing dramatic happens, but the poem suggests that wear, loss, and slow change are ordinary and shared by trees, insects, and people alike.