Speaker
The speaker of this poem has a mysterious, fluid identity. They flit between speaking for themselves and paraphrasing the speech of natural bodies like trees and rivers. In this way, they serve as a conduit between the human reader—lost, cowering, and afraid—and the imploring, wise natural world. Arguably, the speaker is not even an individual, but rather the voice of humanity itself: they often speak in the first person plural. Because Angelou chooses not to use quotation marks to show when other parts of nature are speaking, all of nature and humanity seems to blend into a polyvocal whole. This multi-voiced, fluid quality of the speaker exemplifies one of Angelou's themes: the oneness of the world.
Nature
Though the rock, the river, and the tree are all described individually, they truly represent different facets of a harmonious natural whole. Nature in this poem is in some senses opposed to humanity: it has been abused by humans, especially because of war and colonialism, and begs humanity to change its behavior. In another sense, it is indistinguishable from humanity, or at least wants to be—these natural voices want to reunite and gain peace with human beings, merging into a single entity with shared goals. Angelou implies that humanity's abuse of nature is inextricable from its abuse of other human beings, and that the two problems require one solution.
