The speaker is walking through a cold January street and notices that stores are already showing spring clothes. The timing feels odd to him, and the fashions seem "as mysterious as ever." The mannequin in the window looks oddly alive: she grips her dress as if she were embarrassed or afraid, her white face fixed in an expression of vulnerability.
Outside, real people look nothing like the display. Bundled in dark parkas and hats, they hurry past, so covered up that men and women are hard to tell apart. Nobody stops to look. The speaker feels the cold too, pulling his fingers out of his glove's finger-holes and curling them into fists.
The ending turns toward something warmer. He thinks of friends starting tomato seeds indoors and filling their houses with the smell of baked earth. Real spring, the poem suggests, arrives through growing things, not shop windows. The mood is wry, chilly, and quietly hopeful.