Walking through a wooded hollow, the speaker slows down and starts naming what is there. The poem begins by looking up, at the gap between treetops, then down to the unseen life underground. From there it moves in small, quick glimpses: fox grape, Solomon's seal, curled withered leaves around a shiny black berry, a crust of lichen on a rock. The plants are set on their own lines, with space around them, as if each one were a stop on a slow walk.
The speaker seems quietly absorbed and humble rather than dramatic. The phrase "just one fling on the way up" is hard to pin down, but it might point to a vine's brief, climbing life, which fits fox grape. That is an inference, not something the poem says outright. The last line, "its complex inner life," turns toward the lichen, and the poem suggests that even the plainest, most overlooked thing holds hidden depth. The mood is calm, patient, and attentive, the feeling of noticing more the longer you look.