The speaker walks through a late-autumn landscape and treats the end of summer as a death. The opening image is startling: summer's "green leaf body" lies at the foot of an oak, under the first snow. From there the poem collects small signs of loss and survival, such as a fallen nest, bare trees that seem to moan in the wind, a katydid, and a spruce oozing sap from holes drilled by sapsuckers. Those open "wounds" lead the speaker to say summer was crucified, which gives the season a sacrificial, almost religious weight.
The mood is quiet, sorrowful, and watchful rather than despairing. The speaker's memory of the new wine and old wine skins suggests that something unknown may still fill what is left behind. The ending turns sharply, as a buck passes by while hunters would call his antlers a "rack." The speaker sees a "naked tree," so death and beauty seem to share the same shape.