A man lies alone at night, thinking of a woman's face. That's the emotional center, and everything else bends around it. The title suggests a journey, but the speaker goes nowhere. The pilgrimage seems to be inward, or maybe it's the long haul of missing someone.
The imagery is odd and a little funny. The church chancel becomes "the mouth of a whale," a space that swallows, echoing the biblical Jonah, though the poem never says so. Whatever this loneliness is, it's "bigger than bad weather," huge and unavoidable. Then the poem drops from the grand to the bodily: he keeps himself "in the open" and wakes "to piss."
That sudden plainness is the key move. Longing and holy spaces sit right beside the ordinary needs of a tired body. The mood is quiet, exposed, and wry: sad, but not self-pitying, and a bit stubborn about staying vulnerable.