The title borrows its opening from Shakespeare's Sonnet 73, where the speaker compares his old age to late autumn. Dave Bonta's short poem takes that same season and shrinks it into a few quiet images. The speaker says he hates to look at the land, because a full year turning over seems oddly, almost uncomfortably, perfect. Everything has come round to its end, and that completeness is hard to bear.
Then evening arrives, rising from the yard. The speaker names age as his "canary," the bird once carried into mines to warn of danger, so growing old becomes an early signal of something darker. The last image, "a root sent to bed," is gentler: a plant pulled down into the dark for winter.
The mood is wistful and a little uneasy, but not despairing. The speaker feels the pull of the season's order and resists it, though the root hints at rest as well as ending.