The title suggests a hospital, and the poem hints that the speaker is stuck in a state of anxious waiting. Yet the poem itself happens outdoors, or in the speaker's imagination of it, among wind, trees, fireflies and crickets. The speaker listens hard, hearing footsteps in the wind and the trees "putting their pieces into play," as if the forest were a game being quietly played out.
The middle lines set two ways of living side by side: people who want certainty can lean on mathematics, while people who love the wild have to "empty themselves." The speaker seems to choose emptiness. Even their ears, called "little begging bowls," are asking to be filled.
The ending turns into a wish. The speaker wants to dream "in surround-sound," not of waiting rooms but of flashing fireflies and the crickets' "tireless councils." The mood is hushed, humble and a little hopeful, with the natural world offering comfort that certainty can't.