The poetess feels pain on seeing the pale and corpse like face of her mother. There appears her old familiar pain of childhood in her heart. She realises that her mother’s face has become like the withered moon of the winter season. She feels that time and age spare none and both are inevitable.

The poetess is in a car on her way home to the Cochin airport. She looks outside and feels the young trees seem to be walking past them. With the car they seem to be sprinting or racing. The poetess gives a comparison and contrast of her dozing mother with those of young trees running and full of life.

The poetess talks of various stages of life. On one side there are merry children play and enjoy in the sun. They represent life, vigour, continuity, power, action and carefree life. On the other there is her aged mother. The continuity in the activities of life as well as spontaneous flow of life has been depicted by the merry children spilling out of their homes.

The late winter’s moon is calm and hazy with a dim lustre. It loses its vitality and power. So the poetess compares her mother’s calm, colourless and withered face like the late winter’s moon. She has become weak, wan and ‘pale due to her age of sixty-six. She has lost her vitality.