Dave Bonta's poem reads like a series of notes taken on a walk, each image set down with little commentary. The speaker moves along the foot of a mountain, past a heap of gravel and loose stone, then notices a thin patch of soil where anise root manages to grow. The hollow, a small valley, "empties its silence" into a gap, a lovely way of making quiet feel almost like something that flows downhill. Nearby are old cellar holes, the leftover marks of buildings that are gone, and then a locked gate, which seems to say that people have left or been shut out.
The speaker never states a feeling, but the attention itself suggests calm, curiosity and a touch of loneliness. The ending shifts the mood. Touching the touch-me-nots so they burst is a small, playful act, and it breaks the silence with a flicker of life. After all the stillness and absence, the poem closes on contact between a person and the place.