Three short scenes make up this poem, all set on an brutally cold day: five degrees below zero. The first is almost gentle. Frost clings to the stream bank like a garland, as if the cold were decorating the world for a celebration. Then the mood shifts. A small plane drones overhead, and the speaker calls its sound "dogmatic," a word that suggests something rigid and unyielding. Its shape against the sky forms a cross, which links to the title, "Gospel," and gives the scene a faintly religious weight, though the poem never says what to make of it.
The ending turns physical. The sky is "blue as a bruise," a image that makes the beauty feel painful, and the speaker's lungs ache from simply breathing the freezing air. The mood is stark, quiet, and a little harsh. The speaker seems awed by the scene but also hurt by it, as though nature offers something sacred that is hard to take in.