Dave Bonta begins with a prose note: bad weather has knocked out his high-speed internet, leaving him on slow dial-up and, as he puts it, "slow and single-minded as an autumn cricket." The poem that follows shows what that slowness gives him. Stepping outside in the afternoon, he sees snow settling on his quilted shirt, and he describes it in the language of the screen he's been cut off from: "sudden pixels." He even blinks "like a cursor."
The comparison is playful, but it also suggests how thoroughly the internet has shaped the way he sees. Yet the mood is gentle, not mocking. Being forced offline sharpens his attention, and the last image is quietly beautiful: the dried goldenrod heads, now dusted white, seem to bloom again in "a second, ghostly life." The speaker seems calm, a little amused, and newly attentive to the world right in front of him.