The speaker treats an oak tree as a teacher and makes a series of requests, each beginning with a wish to learn something. Most of these are about living in a tree's way: soaking up sunlight so completely that it becomes a kind of worship, putting up with shade, sharing space with swarms of insects, and standing patiently in wind or fire the way a model holds a pose. Even the roots get a lesson, since the soil becomes an "accomplice" in the tree's quiet mining for nutrients.
The tone is humble and a little playful. Calling the tree's chemistry "speech acts of pure energy" suggests the speaker sees the oak as something almost alien, a mind very unlike ours. The last request is the most personal. Wound wood grows over damage and seals it in, and the speaker wants to learn that same trick for their own "hollow / broken places." The poem ends there, not with a solution but with a hope, and that gives it a tender, quietly vulnerable feel.