The speaker of this short poem seems to be an animal, or perhaps a human speaking through an animal's skin, and the title, "Fellow travelers," hints at companions on a shared road. The opening image is striking: fur "full / of light and harm." Light suggests warmth and beauty, harm suggests danger, and the fur holds both at once.
The fur then becomes "part dress / part gossip," something worn for show that also carries news. It is "telling / the carcass's business," which suggests the pelt still speaks of the dead body it came from. That gives the poem an uneasy, quietly eerie feel. The last image calls the fur an "idle servant / of my night," so it seems to wait on the speaker in the dark without doing much.
The tone is calm and matter-of-fact, even a little wry, but death sits close beneath it. The poem seems to ask what we carry with us, and what it quietly says about us.