While the speaker eats supper indoors, snow quietly covers every sign of the animals that crossed the yard: voles, sparrows, squirrels, a feral cat, even a hawk. The speaker's own footprints vanish too. The last line of the first stanza, "the snow's feet grew to fit them all," is a lovely turn, as if the snow itself were walking over each print and making it its own.
In the second stanza the speaker goes out into the storm, turns on a spotlight, and looks up. The scene could be flat black and white, but the speaker insists it is "anything but gray." The falling flakes against the dark become pepper and salt, a seasoning that links the night to the table the speaker just left. The mood is calm and attentive, and there is no sadness in the erasure. The speaker seems content to be one more small creature passing through, and to find richness in the storm rather than emptiness.