Dave Bonta's poem moves from a quiet private moment to a heavy public one. In the first lines, the speaker "spoke with coffee," as if the morning cup were a companion, and the image of a "dark ear of night" suggests the drink is both listening and still tinted with darkness. It feels intimate, a little sleepy, a last bit of shelter before the day begins.
Then the speaker steps "into the leaden street," and the mood changes. Lead is dull, grey and heavy, and the word makes the city feel weighed down. The final lines turn to the men who "carried the weight of the fields / yesterday today and tomorrow." The poem seems to say that workers who left farmland for the city did not leave their burdens behind; they brought the old labour with them. Time stretches out in that list of days, so the work feels endless. The speaker sounds observant and quietly sombre, and the overall mood is weary and resigned.