The poem opens with an invitation to believe in "ruined gardens of imagination," and then spends its length showing why that belief might be worth the effort. The scene is autumn: rain, fallen leaves, a mountainside burned down to pine stumps. The speaker admits that the "wishbone song" of the leaves is just a rhythm laid over decay, yet the admission doesn't cancel the pleasure. Church bells still sound glistening, and the red oaks and bright witch hazels put on a kind of carnival.
The mood is a mix of wry delight and unease. The comic images, like the woodpecker "sounding like a clown on amphetamines," keep the tone loose, while the phone that finds "the bleakest news in seconds" brings in a darker, modern pull. The ending offers a quiet answer: a mushroom dissolving into ink. Decay here looks like both loss and writing, something that turns into a record. The speaker seems to accept that beauty and ending arrive together.