The poem reimagines the Garden of Eden story as what happens when a person starts thinking for themselves. The opening lines treat independence as a trade: once you "make up your own mind," the tree loses its fruit and leaves, and the surrounding woodlot shrinks away. The tree ends up isolated among fence posts and telephone poles, its bare branches compared to "trembling neurons" searching the wind for sparrows. Nature and the mind blur together here.
The speaker sounds wry and a little stunned rather than outraged. "You become as gods" echoes the serpent's promise in Genesis, but the result is oddly humble: "endlessly bifurcating, simple as stinkhorns," a fungus rather than a deity. Paradise is replaced by a plain field and a "dishy blankness of sky." The mood is quiet, exposed, and lonely, yet there is a hint of dry humor, as if freedom is real but far less glorious than promised.