The speaker stands in the rain and calls a tree the closest thing to a son or daughter he will ever have. It's an eastern red cedar he transplanted as a seedling in 1993, and it has grown far bigger than he expected, now towering over the house. He links it to the juniper bushes he played among as a child in Maine, so the tree quietly joins his past to his present. The tone is casual and a little wry. He admits he misjudged its size, yet he is clearly pleased that songbirds roost in it.
The mood shifts at the end. On stormy nights the tree thumps against the house, a sound that feels almost like a restless child or a knock at the door. The closing haiku, with its evergreen "adding our darkness / to the night," suggests shared loneliness and a calm acceptance. Parent and tree both become part of the dark, and the poem seems at peace with that.