Summary

In the first stanza, the speaker states that the trees have shed their leaves due to the arrival of winter. They pull their aliveness into their trunks and roots for storage. The second stanza characterizes this process as one in which the trees must let go of what everyone calls "most beautiful" about them (9). They do this to save their own lives.

In Stanza 3, the speaker declares that human beings also engage in this survival strategy. There will come times when readers must abandon whatever contributed to their sense of being good enough and worthy of love. Beneath these conditions lies "the center" of one´s "small life" (17-18). According to the speaker, sitting quietly at this center allows one to fully connect to the core of one´s life. Pearson refers to this core as a seed. The final stanza encourages readers to...