News of a death arrives in the same moment as a change in the weather. The speaker learns that someone close has died after a failed bypass, and right away the poem turns to the world outside: a thin layer of snow that disappears as soon as the sun touches it. By the end, only the shadows still look white, a small, odd detail that makes the loss feel strange and unreal.
The last stanza moves from the landscape to the speaker's own hands. They keep trying to write letters, perhaps to the dead person, perhaps just to put the grief into words, but the pen runs out of ink. The comparison to "white" letters suggests writing that leaves no mark, as if nothing can be properly said or kept.
The mood is quiet, numb, and bare. The speaker never says "I am sad." Instead, the fading snow and the empty pen show how fragile life is, and how helpless language can feel when someone is gone.