The speaker sits alone in a sunlit courtyard, unable to tell how much time has passed. The day feels shapeless, and the mood is a mix of boredom, numbness and quiet unease. The ocean image captures this well: life seems to be a set of waves, and the speaker is swimming just to stay afloat, "trying real hard not to drift away."
Voices of authority creep in even though no one is there. They ask why the speaker isn't working and what is in the way, and the speaker feels bound to obey and "swallow" the rules. The poem then turns inward. Escape is a long-held dream, but the speaker starts to question it. Is the enemy the people in control, or the self? The final lines suggest a worrying possibility: that the speaker has been shaped into someone polite, smiling and silent. By the end, "drift away" no longer sounds like something to fear. It sounds almost like a choice, and that makes the ending unsettling.