Dave Bonta's short poem imagines the other lives we might have had, and it does so through scraps of strange, unsettling imagery rather than a clear story. The opening lines picture a different kind of growing: "white and thin as rope," creeping "over and over the ground," like a plant kept from sunlight. The speaker also imagines "other bodies," as if identity itself could have gone another way.
Then the tone turns guarded. Something is "a secret to be hid," though not "under the house," and not under a "would-be moon," a phrase that suggests a light that is almost, but never quite, there. The closing images are cold and useless: "ships of ice" that cannot sail far, and "guns without bullet to grieve." Both seem built for action but can't act.
The mood is quiet, wistful, and a little eerie. The speaker doesn't say what is regretted, which leaves a sense of loss without a clear cause. The poem seems to dwell on what never happened and can't be fixed.