A walker studies a limestone cliff and finds animal faces forming in the rock, snarling and crowded together like mourners around a body. The speaker warns that these aren't angels and aren't there for us. From there the poem moves through a winter landscape of bare trees, cedars, juncos and a nervous nuthatch, while the question "who's to say what's real" hangs over a valley riddled with sinkholes.
Then the speaker follows the creek underground. Fogged glasses and echoing voices, which might belong to drowned cave divers, turn the walk into something stranger. The image of trees growing downward, mirroring those above, suggests a hidden world under the surface.
The mood is curious, uneasy and quietly humble. The speaker comes back out shivering, with the cliff empty again and "no conclusions." The closing goats, grazing the pasture to the nubbins, bring us back to plain, bare, everyday life.