Creeley gives us two tiny scenes that feel like a held breath. In the first, someone is looking down, and the speaker admits how long that takes. The wording is hesitant: the first time, they expected that whatever they were looking at would either "shoot up or else drop off." Nothing is named, so the object stays uncertain, and the speaker seems caught between two outcomes, a rise or a fall, with no sense of which will come.
The second part is even more compressed. One hand is on a trigger, and the other rests on the first hand. It could read as steadying, as if the speaker needs help to do something frightening, or as one part of the self holding another back or pushing it forward. The poem doesn't settle this.
The mood is tense and quiet. Short lines and plain words make every pause feel heavy. What lingers is the feeling of standing at the edge of an action, unsure whether to commit to it.