A man drives through Elkins Park in the middle of the night and finds comfort in how quiet it is. Everyone is asleep, and he says that's how he likes the human race. By the time he climbs Harrison Ave, the thought has grown into something close to reverence: the sleeping human race is the holy one.
Then the drive turns toward memory. Passing an abandoned high school, he wonders if it's still haunted, and suddenly remembers breaking in during the Nineties with friends who are now dead. He took a hammer, never used it, and kept it in his closet until after graduation. The last line, "He was smashed then, too," is ambiguous. It might mean he was drunk, or it might hint at a wider feeling of being broken.
The mood is calm, lonely, and a little eerie. The place names make it feel real, while the poem's title suggests grief, and the sleeping streets seem to hold both peace and loss.