Two short images, and almost nothing else: a creek with no life in it, and a person eating. The title places us in coal country, and the poem seems to let that setting do the explaining. A creek empty of creatures suggests damage, though the poem never says what caused it. We're left to read the silence ourselves.
The speaker's reaction is small and oddly physical. Eating becomes "a way of answering / the great quiet." It's as if the stillness around them is a question, or a kind of pressure, and the only reply they can manage is the plain act of staying alive. There's something both stubborn and a little sad in that. The speaker doesn't lecture or mourn out loud. They chew, they swallow, they make a sound in a place that has gone quiet.
The mood is hushed and uneasy, with a faint defiance underneath. The bare lines and wide spaces on the page echo the emptiness they describe.