The speaker addresses a friend, Jeffie, and recalls arriving at her seaside house after a hurried drive off the highway. The house is far from tidy: it creaks, it has cockroaches, and sea creatures turn up on the beach and even in the drawers. Yet none of this reads as complaint. The speaker and the others come "ready for refreshment," and the house gives it to them.
Jeffie herself is the calm centre of the scene. While the visitors rush in, she stands in the kitchen, pregnant and unbothered, cooking artichokes. The poem suggests she is comfortable with mess and with life in all its forms, the way the sea and the house seem to be.
The mood shifts from hurry to ease in the last lines, when everyone lies down together under the night wind. Comparing the wind to spanish moss makes it feel soft, slow and draped over them. The ending is warm, tired and deeply content.