The Speaker
Limón's poetic speaker only refers to herself in the first-person twice, briefly. First in the singular:
...it's the greening of the trees
that really gets to me...
and later in the plural, to address a collective societal hurt:
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty...
This speaker can be identified with the poet herself, based on Limón's characteristically personal style. But more to the point, we know the speaker is someone who admits to holding a lot of hurt and emptiness, and who therefore finds the new spring leaves poignant. She is present on the spring street as an observer and allows the scene to move her emotionally. Thus, she is also the emotional stand-in for the reader, the move from "me" to "us" inviting the reader to join in her emotional shift.
The Tree with New Leaves
Interestingly, the two uses of "I" in the poem do not belong to the speaker, but to imagined speech (or thought) from the tree with new green leaves. This tree is personified in the last two and a half lines of the poem, saying that it is ready to "take it all" from the world as it holds out a leaf like a hand. We can imagine this tree as the strong, resilient woman that the speaker wants to be.
The Crabapple Blossoms
In the first line and a half, the "fuchsia funnels" of the crabapple tree are personified as active in that they are "breaking out" of their host, a dynamic and forceful way to describe spring blooms. This establishes the tone of the poem, whose trees are all personified to some extent.
The Neighbor's Cherry Tree
Like the crabapple blossoms, the cherry tree has action and character ascribed to it with the word "shoving." This tree is "obscene[ly]" thrusting its bright flowers to the sky. It, and the crabapple, seem impatient and attention-seeking in contrast with the tree whose subtle green leaves the speaker prefers.
