Answer: the author compares life with a cherry tree and ponders about life and how fast it goes away .
Explanation: here's the related piece a poetry by Houseman: "loveliest of trees, the cherry now"
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.