Pickering gives us a handful of small scenes from one summer: a fieldfare feeding a fallen nestling, a crow swooping on a silver gull. One is tender, the other predatory, and the poem sets them side by side without comment. Care and threat both belong to the season, and the speaker simply notes them.
Then the poem turns to "my love," as if these sights and sounds were being gathered up for someone close. "Late nightness" is an odd, invented-sounding phrase, and it fits the sequence title, which suggests these are memories surfacing in the dark. The mood is quiet, reflective and a little wistful.
The last lines stretch time out. "Growing, leaving" runs from "the first lark" to "the last swallow," from early summer's songs to the departure of the birds. The poem seems to be about how growth and loss happen together, and how a whole season can pass in a few glimpses.