Dave Bonta's short poem is about how a day wears down the clarity it begins with. The opening image is neat: morning is "the best poem," fresh and open, while afternoon "papers it over," covering that freshness with chores, tasks and the clutter of ordinary life. The speaker seems to feel a mild regret about this, though it's said calmly rather than angrily.
The middle couplet widens the thought. "All settled things must break in pieces" suggests that nothing stable lasts, and the speaker's response is odd and interesting: "I believe in my sleep." Sleep is a place where things aren't fixed, so it becomes a kind of faith.
Then the poem lands on something small and human. Woken at night by snoring, the speaker laughs at the memory. The mood turns warm and light. After the talk of breakage and loss, a funny, ordinary interruption feels like its own quiet kind of poem.