The speaker is babysitting in an unfamiliar apartment, and the poem reads like a running log of what she notices. There's a loaf of date-nut bread, a man wandering around in his shorts, clothes hanging in the kitchen. After years of living beside a noisy courtyard, she finds the silence almost strange. She is typing a libretto by Kenneth Koch, waiting for the doorbell, with the children asleep.
What she feels is mostly kept out of sight. She says she is "avoiding detailed observation" of her emotional state, and the flat, offhand tone backs that up. The I Ching line about knowing the changes of season sits oddly between the mundane details, as if she is reaching for wisdom but landing back among the laundry. The ending is small and a little wry: not washing the bedspread is "something." The mood is tired, watchful and slightly lonely, with a thin comfort in a modest, hard-won bit of rest.