The poem reads like a walk through a place the speaker once knew well, now changed. It begins with a memory of play, the rotten tomato battles, and then drifts into what's there now: common snakeroot, lawns and gardens gone back to meadow. The land is quietly taking itself back.
The details that follow are small and a little odd. The buildings' straight lines, "no more turning," and the digital electric meter suggest that the human world is both fading and updating, as if the place is caught between being abandoned and being kept up. We can't be sure which, and the poem doesn't say.
The speaker's feeling seems to be wistful rather than openly sad. There's no complaint, just observation. The barn that "once housed an elephant" is a surprising, almost magical detail, and ending on its "great grey-green roof" leaves the mood tender and slightly mysterious. Memory and present sit side by side, and the gaps between lines feel like the silences of an empty place.