Winter has stripped the trees, and the speaker watches what is left. With the leaves gone, the stars can look straight through the branches, and the poem treats this as a kind of staring contest between sky and earth. The fallen leaves, imagined as "great beasts of foliage," have crept to the ground, where their rustling at night sounds like "restless currency," as if the season were counting out its coins.
The trees themselves, with "nowhere to hide," go dormant. The poem imagines them dreaming of shadows that move like modern dancers, bare limbs twisting and swaying on the ground. The last lines turn to snakes, which are too cold to move now but will return in warmer weather to "caress the air" with their tongues.
The mood is quiet, watchful, and a little eerie, but not bleak. The speaker seems fascinated by winter's stillness, and the title suggests everything has been pared down. Beneath that bareness the poem hints at waiting and the promise of return.