Dave Bonta's poem reads like a set of instructions for a small private ritual: go into the woods at night, stand under an umbrella, and let yourself dissolve into the setting. The speaker's tone is calm and a little playful. The "prim column / of not-rain" under the umbrella is a funny image, a neat dry space that gradually becomes "as anonymous as the others," just one more patch of dripping dark. Counting drips and breathing in the smell of rot and truffle "as if it were the freshest tea" turns decay into something comforting.
The second stanza shifts. Lightning briefly lights up the ground, and everything looks flat and bare, "a stark here-&-now / of sticks & leaves." The speaker seems to feel a sudden hardness, as if the earth can't be sunk into any more. The final image, the umbrella's ribs as a "false vault," suggests a makeshift cathedral. The mood is hushed, reverent, and slightly eerie, a quiet kind of worship without any grand claims.