The poem opens in a hot, dry landscape where everything seems to move: lizards dance on the sand, the mountains shimmer and refuse to hold still in the heat, and even a lazy tortoise keeps pace with the shadow of a maguey plant. Nature here is stripped down to a few bare things (sun, tree, stone, sky) and a stubborn urge to keep circling and moving. The speaker pictures restless figures such as Lucifer pacing the earth and Coyote loping along, always close to hunger.
Then the poem turns toward hope. The speaker wishes that the fullness outside might break the emptiness inside, the way human prayers and curses seem to seed the clouds until rain walks across the air. The image of feet of rain on a "Galilee of air" gives the sky a quiet, almost holy feeling.
The mood moves from parched and weary to playful and determined. The short last lines feel like a decision: if everything else is dancing, the speaker will join in, starting today.