The poem is about what it feels like to sit in meditation, and it tries to capture that feeling through a handful of images from the sea and the desert. The speaker begins by calling himself an anchor, something heavy and still, but placed somewhere odd: alone in a desert, where there is no water for an anchor to grip. That picture suggests both steadiness and a certain emptiness or isolation.
Then the poem opens up. The speaker says he is open to a joy beyond himself, one he sees as water. The dry landscape suddenly has relief in it. In the last stanza, the sea imagery returns: he is settled in port with his captain. The poem doesn't say who the captain is, so readers can decide whether it means a higher self, a guiding presence, or something else.
The mood is quiet and content. It moves from solitude and dryness toward arrival and rest, and the short, plain lines mirror that calm.