The poem sets a small, bright picture of early summer, the first cherries gathering in green water, against a speaker looking hard at his own aging. The title, "Golden years," sounds like a greeting-card phrase, but the poem treats the subject with dry honesty. The speaker says he is "resolved to understand" his old body, and what he finds isn't flattering: eyes that still lead him astray, and an appetite that has him serving his stomach rather than the other way around.
The last couplet is the sharpest. "Eating a dinner of wind / for an empty urn" suggests that his hungers feed on nothing, and that the urn, which brings to mind ashes or burial, waits for him regardless. The mood is wry and quietly sober rather than despairing. The speaker doesn't flinch from mortality, yet the fresh cherries at the start leave a thread of pleasure running through the poem. Desire hasn't gone away; it has simply become something to look at clearly.