Dave Bonta's poem moves through a series of odd, dreamlike snapshots that don't quite explain themselves. A lute becomes an office, a stone seems to grieve for a temple, and bread and butter hold a conversation about some "great eater." The logic is closer to a dream than to a story, and the poem seems happy to leave it that way.
Still, a mood builds. Several images suggest loss or absence: the mourning stone, the missing temple. Then comes the "hanging jack," a device for roasting birds, remembered through its heat. That memory of cooking and appetite sits uneasily beside the last lines, where the speaker plays the lute and "could not kill anything." The poem seems to set music against violence, or perhaps gentleness against hunger. The speaker comes across as quiet, reflective, a little sad, and perhaps unable or unwilling to take part in the harshness the earlier images hint at. It's a short, strange poem that rewards slow reading.