The speaker begins with a joke: there's supposedly a city ordinance against wandering, and she's guilty. She has seen signs forbidding parking, spitting and smoking, but none forbidding wandering, and she adds a relieved "thank god." The tone is playful and a little defiant.
Then the poem turns from joke to declaration. For the speaker, wandering isn't just aimless walking but "a way of life," an openness to everything around her. She compares herself to a sea anemone taking in a wave, absorbing flowers, faces and words. The verbs are hungry ones: "devour," "swallow." The world becomes part of her, and its wonder is her "most essential food."
The mood is joyful, sensual and confident. The final line, "no men can legislate my being," turns the opening joke into a firm statement of freedom: no rule can control a person who lives this fully.