The speaker begins with a kind of schedule, explaining that today, he will teach the audience how to name parts of a rifle. He reminds them that they learned how to clean their guns the day before, whereas tomorrow they will learn what to do after shooting. The speaker then points out japonica flowers in a nearby garden, noting how they glow like colorful coral, before reiterating that he will be teaching his audience the names of the gun's parts today. This pattern repeats in each stanza: the speaker uses blunt, straightforward language to describe the parts of the rifle, and then becomes momentarily distracted by nearby nature, using colorful figurative language to describe it. His descriptions of the gun and the garden converge and repeat in increasingly surreal and strange ways.
Next, the speaker points out the lower sling swivel, the upper sling swivel, and the piling swivel of the gun, mentioning that the assembled listeners don't actually have any slings for their guns yet and aren't even in possession of a piling swivel. He then notes the silent and beautiful motions of the branches, pointing out that he and his audience lack these traits as well. He moves on to the gun's safety catch, telling his audience that they can easily use their thumbs to release it and should never use their finger. The delicate flower blossoms nearby also never seem to use their finger, he notes.
Showing his listeners the gun's bolt, the speaker explains that the bolt's purpose is to open the breech—or, as it is colloquially known, easing the spring. He compares the back-and-forth motion of the bolt to the back-and-forth motion of nearby bees pollinating flowers, and, using a play on words, says that the bees are easing the Spring.
Easing the Spring is easy, he says, if you have strong thumbs. Though it is unclear what he is comparing, the speaker then compares something—an object or a process—to various gun parts, including a point of balance, which his audience does not have on their guns. He also compares the unknown process or object to the nearby almond blossoms and bees before repeating that, today, the soldiers will learn to name the parts.
