The poem sketches a way of living by small refusals and small habits. The speaker begins by letting "treasure rest," and the image that follows, "sun on fish," suggests the glint of something valuable that is simply left alone, admired rather than grabbed. Breakfast is "trouble," a wry line that makes difficulty feel ordinary, something you swallow each morning and carry on from. Even "absence" doesn't stop things: life continues through it.
The speaker also turns down "fox and fool," which reads as cunning and foolishness alike. Both are ways of being pulled off course, and the "we" says no to them together. The last line settles on knitting, a slow, repetitive, patient act, and ends on "to be." Judging by the title, "Default," this is the baseline: no grand gestures, just steady making and simply existing.
The mood is calm, dry, and quietly stubborn. There's humor in it, but also a sense of resilience, of getting on with things without fuss.