The speaker sets out hungry, or at least hopeful, with six silver spoons in a pocket, as if ready for a proper meal. Then the poem slips from the ordinary into the odd. Dinner is searched for in the garden and on the plate, and when it arrives it comes from a "great butter-woman," a huge, almost mythic figure who feeds everyone, "our bellies," with horses and dirt.
The poem doesn't explain itself, and it feels like a dream or a folktale. The silver spoons suggest a feast, even a little wealth, but what's served is wild and earthy. The mood is playful and unsettling at once: abundance and strangeness mixed together. The speaker seems to accept it all without protest, which makes the scene stranger still. Judging by the imagery, the poem may be about hunger and nourishment coming from the land itself, however odd that nourishment looks. Its title, "Feast day," promises celebration, and the poem delivers a feast, just not the one we expected.