The speaker is stuck indoors and out on the porch during a rainy January thaw, and the weather seeps into everything, including their own sense of self. In the first lines they describe themselves as "first cousin to mud," soft and sinking, and the French line "Ou sont les neiges?" ("Where are the snows?") adds a wry note of longing for real winter. The house hums with the washing machine, which the speaker playfully calls a "dervish waltz."
Outside, a winter wren sings a summer-sounding song, and the speaker hears it as thin and "boneless," as if the season has gone slack. Then the poem turns toward something almost beautiful: the locust trunks, soaked by rain, look green and glow in the dim light. Beyond them, though, the woods are a "gray-brown ruin." The mood is damp, mildly gloomy, and a little humorous, but it ends with a quiet appreciation of odd color in a dull season.