In just a few lines, the speaker sits down to a quiet meal and ends up thinking about time itself. The opening claim, that "time is a symptom of being," suggests that we only feel time passing because we exist at all. The speaker says they are "all in on it," as if they have accepted the deal: to be alive is to live inside time, with everything that comes with it.
Then the poem drops into something small and ordinary. The speaker pokes at their dinner, calling themselves "a gentle sort of scholar," a phrase that sounds both gently self-mocking and affectionate. They are reading the "Epistle of Cassandra." Cassandra is the figure from Greek myth who sees the future but is never believed, so the choice of reading feels loaded, though the poem doesn't explain it. The mood is calm, wry, and a little wistful: an easy acceptance of being alive, with a quiet shadow of foreknowledge underneath.