Dave Bonta starts with a small puzzle about language. "Earth tones" is a phrase we use without thinking, but the speaker points out that someone newly arrived from the tropics wouldn't get it. Where they come from, the earth might be red, or buried under bright, crowded green, so a palette of muted browns and grays wouldn't feel like the color of the land at all.
The poem then fills in what the phrase means in a place with a dormant season: moss-green, bark-gray, and "a thousand browns," with umber, ochre and sienna named almost like paint tubes. The final lines shift from sight to sound. Spring is "still a hollow gurgling / somewhere below," hidden but on its way.
The speaker seems quietly attentive and a little tender, noticing beauty in what looks drab. The mood is hushed and patient, a landscape holding its breath. Judging by the imagery, it's late winter or very early spring, and the poem asks us to value the waiting as much as the bloom.