A small scene at a bird feeder carries a quiet kind of admiration. One house finch, apparently blind or nearly so, stays put while the rest of the flock scatters in a panic. The speaker watches him cling to a perch he "had struggled to find," and the line tells us how much effort even this simple stillness cost him.
The poem keeps its tone steady and unsentimental. It doesn't pity the bird. Instead it notices how he navigates: by sound, by shadows, by the rush of air from fifty wings leaving. His world is made of other creatures' absence and movement. When the flock flees, he is left "alone," yet that solitude also gives him the feeder to himself, and he goes on pulling seeds from under its little doors.
The mood is hushed, patient, and a little tender. The short, broken lines mimic the bird's careful, feeling-his-way pace. What the speaker seems to feel is respect: for persistence, for a creature that adapts, and for calm in the face of whatever frightens everyone else.