I felt that as a reader you could sense the growth and hope coming from the cottonwood tree. HD circles the piece when he speaks: “The poplar is bright on the hill. The poplar sprawls, deeply rooted among the trees. This is showing how there is growth elsewhere and what I believe can represent positivity and hope. There are several words that are used in the second half of the piece, there is “bright on the hill”, “the poplar tree lies”. This word choice is more positive when the poet uses “bright” instead of “black seeds.” Also we can see the difference between in the first part the HD uses “shriveled” and in the second part there is “spread out”. All of these are opposites from start to finish. As I read this poem I thought that perhaps HD is trying to represent someone or something in a dark place, but still manages to see the good. The reason I think this would be someone who is already in a bad place is because she says, "still far beyond the worn pods and blackened mint stems", showing that she is already in that dark place and looking towards that aspen which is growing. Also another example would be in the last two stanzas when he says, “As I die on the path between the cracks of the rocks.” In my opinion rocks are a hard, opaque and cold object, so I could see that this would represent the bad place the poet could find himself in