Andrew Hamlin's sequence reads like a notebook kept by someone who watches everything closely, often from a bus, and lets his mind drift. Each short haiku catches a passing moment: a crane that looks like a cat, a cedar branch bent like a worm, a woman waving as the bus pulls away, a voice "like the end of the world." Other images turn inward. The speaker doubts himself ("What else might I be wrong about?"), jokes about breathing out CO2, and admits his throat cracks when he says "driver."
The mood is quiet, wry, and a little lonely. Humor sits right beside seriousness: death is "a serious thing," yet so are two white lights on three white walls. The speaker seems to be alone at night, listening to a choir below his floor or a hiss from the street where "no one goes anywhere." The final lines, with hand and pen feeling charged just as bedtime arrives, suggest a mind still alive and restless as the day ends.