A speaker stands outside on a December night and watches meteors cut across the sky above bare oak branches. At first the scene is simply observed, but the speaker soon compares the sky to a sleeping face, as though the whole night were a dreamer whose dreams we can see flare up in silence. That silence matters: all that "blazing action" happens without a sound, which makes it feel both dramatic and strangely gentle.
As the speaker keeps looking, the sky grows less familiar. It seems "wholly itself" and yet "possessed," wild and vulnerable at once. Then the poem turns inward. The speaker wants to be present the way an oak is, rooted and open, with "empty arms" reaching into the void. The mood is hushed, awed, and a little yearning. The speaker doesn't try to explain the sky, only to stand under it with the same quiet attention the trees seem to have.