The poem is short and strange, and much of its pull comes from how it bends its own words. The speaker calls themselves a "scab," a word that means both a strikebreaker and the crust over a wound. The speaker is "employed till I bled / a little too much," so the two meanings blur: a replacement worker who is used up, and a wound that keeps reopening. Then "bled" slides into "led" in the second stanza, as if the sound itself carries the speaker into a new situation, one without "company."
The feeling is loneliness, but not bitterness. Having been pushed out, or having pushed too far, the speaker ends in a garden, "serving the best / flowers." The word "serving" keeps a trace of the old job, yet now the work is chosen and gentle. The mood is quiet and wry, sad at the edges but oddly peaceful, as though healing has begun in solitude.