Dave Bonta turns a night journey into a small, dreamlike ritual. Each short stanza shows the passengers doing something ordinary, such as drinking, sleeping, wandering the aisles or reading, and each action is compared to something older and stranger. They drink "like brothers," sleep "like wells of light," wander "like lost sheep," read "like patriarchs." The train begins to feel less like a vehicle and more like a world of its own, where the travellers belong to the coach as if they had grown into it.
The speaker seems calm, even quietly delighted. There is a sense of closeness among strangers, and of being cut off from the ordinary world, "far from any houses." The "iron shoes" suggest the heavy, rhythmic weight of the train on its rails. The last image, flying through the dark "cool as a glowworm," makes the mood gentle and glowing: a small light moving steadily through the night.