The speaker and a partner are working an apple orchard for the last time. The poem suggests the land is about to become a house site, and the trees will be left to die. The opening question, "Have we ever done anything else?", sounds like someone already looking back on a whole life of this work.
The details are small and tender. The partner rescues a mouse and her babies, even though the couple always sets traps. Their jokes are the same old jokes, and the tractor smell comes around "once more." The list of apple varieties, with the common ones already gone, shows care for the trees. Now the trees are unpruned and unmowed, getting scab, living out "their last year with roots, with leaves."
The mood is quiet and aching, with grief held back rather than spoken. The ending turns to goldfinches, snowgeese and a raven's wing, as if the speaker is trying to take in the beauty before it goes.