The speaker looks back on a journey and says the road, though poor, was a good companion. That small comfort sets up everything that follows. He lists the people he left: brother, uncle, father. But after each one, he says "my wife" again, so she appears four times in seven short lines. It's as if she can't be left behind in a single moment, or as if each departure brings her back to mind.
The repetition makes the poem feel like a heavy, circling thought. The speaker doesn't explain why he went, and he doesn't say whether he regrets it. The poem suggests he took nothing with him, no possessions and maybe no real comfort either. The closing phrase "without a thing" is flat and bare, and it hits hard.
The mood is quiet, lonely, and a little stunned. The road gives him company, but the poem leaves us wondering what that company cost him.