Dave Bonta's short poem captures the strange emptiness of a package holiday. The first image, "amber thoughts" furnishing "a glass discourse," suggests a drowsy, sun-soaked haze: thoughts that glow like drinks held up to the light, and conversation that feels thin and brittle, like glass. Nothing deep is being said.
The speaker seems quietly detached. "Greed for sun" makes the holiday sound like an appetite shared by a crowd, something people do together without really choosing it. Then comes the flat line "we pass the whole day / only being there," where the day is simply got through, with no real experience in it.
The ending is the sharpest turn. Suddenly the speaker asks us to "consider how to live / down a mine," a dark, enclosed place that is the opposite of a bright beach. It could be a wry comparison with other people's hard lives, or a sign that the speaker feels buried by the leisure itself. The mood is dry, uneasy, and gently ironic.