This poem is about our human equality, about what is and isn't important, and about the emptiness of waiting for death. Dove's ability to use words both literally and metaphorically enrich and deepen the poem's meanings. "Evening," and "the dark," imply life's end as well as times of day; "waiting" and "minimalist" and "desert" imply emptiness. The proximity of "ajar" and "sloshes" makes us think of slopjars; the night as "needlepoint with raw moon as signature" speaks of puncture wounds and bedsores; "the honeysuckle in its golden dotage" of the sickly-sweet and sour of urine and unwashed bodies.

"So you wrote a few poems," the narrator says to himself or to the occupants. The horned thumbnail doesn't care; the gray underwear says So what. And outside, in the "real" world, it is night, and we are in the desert on a plain looking down on the valley settlements that "put on their lights / like armor." But their attempts to stave off death are useless. The only "real" things are sounds: the finch's "chit," itself minimalist, and the poet's sandal's wonderfully onomatopoeic "inconsequential crunch"--a metaphor, perhaps, for the value of our space of time upon the planet.

But it is in the last line that Dove subtly reminds us of what is to come for each of us. We who were "once in love" will someday be the occupants of old folk's homes. It is this line that even the young student or resident can relate to, a line that may make them realize that the "old folks" might be real people after all.