Carl Sandburg paints a small coastal scene on the Chesapeake Bay: oyster beds, lonely clam boats, and five white houses on a narrow strip of land. The sea itself is the main presence—large, ancient, and holding on to the land and the people who live by it. There is a quiet loneliness here, but also affection.
The speaker calls himself "a loon about the sea," meaning he is foolishly, helplessly in love with it. He keeps making songs and cries about it, even forgetting them, because the feeling is bigger than words. The same pull touches five working men he once shared a fish fry with in a shaky tar-paper shack. The mood is wistful and a little mysterious: the sea seems to know and keep everything about these lives, holding them the way it holds the shore.