The speaker stands before a grove of beech trees and looks at them closely, almost as if meeting a group of people. The roots are "skinny" and cling to one another, and the trees seem like an "exclusive crowd," closed off and "inward-looking." Their smooth gray bark is "smart," a word that suggests both clever and neatly dressed, and it hasn't yet developed the cankers, or diseased wounds, that might mar it. The scars shaped like eyes add a quiet strangeness, as though the trees are watching back while also turning away.
The short, spare lines mirror the sparse, careful way someone notices things on a slow walk. The tone is observant, amused, and a little reverent. The ending lifts the poem out of simple description: even in daylight, the grove seems to keep "something of the moon," a pale, hushed glow. That final image leaves a mood of stillness and mild mystery, as if the woods hold on to night even when it's gone.