A speaker sends off a DNA test and gets back an answer no lab would give: she is related to the wild things around her. Her grandfather is a nettle, her cousins are a snapping turtle and a wolf spider, and she carries a bit of fox and owl in her. The poem plays with the language of genetic results ("second cousins," "thrice removed") but applies it to creatures she has met by the river, in the garden, on the road.
One small twist stands out. The oak she calls Grandmother turns out not to be an ancestor at all. That detail feels honest, as if the poem admits that feeling close to something isn't the same as being related to it. Still, the tone is warm and playful, with quiet wonder underneath. By the end, the catbird is her brother ("I knew it all along"), and they share the same "cobbled-together song." The mood is gentle and content: she isn't discovering something new so much as confirming what she already felt, that she belongs to the natural world.