Williams Carlos Williams - Approach of Winter

The half-stripped trees
struck by a wind together,
bending all,
the leaves flutter drily
and refuse to let go
or driven like hail
stream bitterly out to one side
and fall
where the salvias, hard carmine,—
like no leaf that ever was—
edge the bare garden
                                   -William Carlos Williams



My intial reaction was that he was talking about the ruthlessness of winter and its grip on nature. Williams uses various adjectives to describe the scene of the poem.Williams's poetry here is very succinct. He is remarking how winter makes its presence known, and he uses imagery to show how it seems to seep into autumn, as leaves gradually fall off of trees, the air grows a little bit colder each day, and the ground hardens as you get closer to winter.