Andrew Hamlin's poem is a string of short, untitled fragments, each one a single glimpse: a battered can rolling along, a horse and a spider on opposite sides of a field, soap worn down to a dagger. Nothing is explained, but the pieces add up to a mood of loneliness and quiet grief. The speaker mentions mourning, a man who was "my only man," and a "horrible year," though the poem never says exactly what happened.
The tone stays low and tired, with images of drifting, trudging and fading. Yet there are small turns toward relief. The speaker asks the year to stretch wide enough to "extract happiness," and the closing tanka ends on light: a sunray bouncing off a white wall to brighten a gull's underwings. After so much dimness, that last image feels like a hard-won, gentle glimmer of hope rather than a full recovery.