Decay

We bet you'll never look at a fruit the same way after this poem. Jeffers's speaker compares America's decaying empire to a flower that makes a fruit that then rots to make some more earth. Decay is a necessary part of nature and the speaker's ideas in the poem that are all about the cycles man perpetuates throughout history. Civilizations and cultures grow and decay just like nature's fruit here. So we can't really say we want things to stick around forever because everything passes according to these natural laws of growth and decay.

• Lines 3-4: You can't have fruit and flowers all of the time. Eventually both forms evolve into something else and eventually end up back in the earth where they came from. You can't have growth without decay and you can't have fruit without earth.
• Line 5: Maybe folks might think if they rush around and do their job relatively well, all of the decay will just go away. Unfortunately, the speaker tells us that's not how it works. Rush around all you like, but the empire you're a part of is still decaying. 
• Line 6: Meteors are just as important as mountains since we see all around us that nature has both. So we can cry about things ending, but that's just a colossal waste of time. What we can control, according to the speaker, is the shiny potential that lies beneath the decaying empire. The republic can still shine after those meteors strike and wipe everything away.