The poem is a string of questions and images that all circle one thing: a tropical storm, pictured as a system rather than a person. It begins by asking what kind of faceless bureaucrat would wear such a gray uniform, and the answer slides into a hornet's nest, a paper mask with a single dark opening. That opening is the storm's eye, which the poem calls a sump swallowing all assumptions. Whatever we thought we knew about safety or control drains away into it.
The speaker's feeling seems to be uneasy awe, mixed with a dry, almost sardonic humor. Comparing the eye to a toddler god is both funny and chilling: a power that is huge, careless, and childishly sure that we will simply disappear under the rain. The mood is gray, tense, and a little bleak. The storm has no malice and no plan, which somehow makes it worse. It is indifferent, like paperwork that can't be argued with.