Tossing away an apple core, the speaker suddenly thinks of his father, who used to do the same thing and ask himself where he should plant an apple tree that day. The poem traces that habit back through the father's life: summers at an uncle's orchard, college days on a motor scooter, and trips with the speaker's mother through the mountains and forests of Pennsylvania. Autumn was apple season, and the favorite was the Stayman Winesap.
The turn comes near the end. After all those years of scattered cores, the father is "in the ground / now himself." The speaker is left looking for the wild apple trees his father may have seeded.
The mood is quiet and tender rather than openly sorrowful. Grief is never stated outright. It shows in the small, ordinary gesture of the toss, and in the search that carries the father's habit on. The unplanned trees become a kind of living memory.