4. Now that you have read the poem in detail, we can begin to ask what the poem might mean. Here are two suggestions. Can you think of others?

(i) Does the poem present a conflict between man and nature? Compare it with A Tiger in the Zoo. Is the poet suggesting that plants and trees, used for ‘interior decoration’ in cities while forests are cut down, are ‘imprisoned’, and need to ‘break out’?

(ii) On the other hand, Adrienne Rich has been known to use trees as a metaphor for human beings; this is a recurrent image in her poetry. What new meanings emerge from the poem if you take its trees to be symbolic of this particular meaning?

(i) Absolutely, the poem presents a conflict between man and nature. The poem suggests that the plants and trees are rebelling and making their way to the place where they actually belong to. They are unwilling to be used for decorating houses. They don't want to stay imprisoned so they are  breaking out from the poet's house. Man wants to control nature. He likes to have a control over natural resources so that he can fulfill his wishes. He uses trees and plants to decorate his home. But he forgets that they are nature's gift to him. 
In the poem A Tiger in the Zoo, the poet says that animals feel bounded by cages. They want to live in open where they can be on their own. Both the poems advocate that human beings should not confine plants, trees and animals to restictive surroundings to meet his own demands. 

(ii) If the poet has used trees as metaphor for human beings, then it can be uinterpreted that human beings are also a part of the nature. They also want to be free from the mechanization of lives wish to enjoy the natural bliss.