Mike Stone's "Changes" moves like a dream, where one image slides into another without warning. A thought warms its hands over itself, as if thinking were a small fire. The sun becomes the moon, a face becomes a landscape, and summer's brown hair is dusted with snow. Nothing stays fixed for long, and the poem seems happy about that.
The speaker doesn't sound anxious about all this change. Instead, the shift from darkness to an "open field / Shining and wonderful" suggests relief and wonder. A new thought arrives, puts the colors "in their proper places," and clears the mind. The seasons turning from summer to snow to autumn feel less like loss and more like a natural rhythm.
The ending is quiet and intimate. People drink "the thought of autumn wine," and one thought touches another. The mood is calm, dreamy, and warm, with a gentle sense that the mind, like the year, keeps renewing itself.