The speaker talks to the earth as if it were an aging, worn-out parent, and the poem slowly makes clear who is really in trouble. The opening question, "Why do you keep feeding us?", sounds almost embarrassed. Humans give back so little: scraps, onion skins, a handmade camp lanyard. The earth, meanwhile, is described like someone who has stopped taking care of herself. She is tired, wrinkled, cracked, and she smells bad. The missing "jewels," the birds and insects, suggest a land losing its living things.
The tone is casual and childlike, even a bit teasing, which makes the guilt land harder. The speaker admits that people don't seem to care how the earth looks or what she does. Then the voice turns anxious. If the earth leaves, "where would you go?" And the last question is the most worrying: "where will we?" The mood moves from awkward politeness to quiet alarm, leaving us with a real fear about what happens when the giver runs out.