The speaker describes being noticed by someone they never actually saw: a black woman whose attention reaches them in a moment of deep grief. The poem names that grief plainly, as sorrow at the world and an "embracing loss," as if the speaker has wrapped themselves in it. Her voice then seems to rise out of their sleep, which gives the encounter a dreamlike, half-real feel.
The turn comes near the end. The speaker admits that what they saw was "trouble," not her. Their own pain got in the way, and they looked past the person in front of them. The final lines are hard to pin down, but they suggest the speaker preferred any hurt of their own to really facing her. The title, "Over sight," plays on oversight as both a mistake and a failure to see, and it fits that reading. The mood is quiet, uneasy, and self-questioning, with a sense of guilt about how grief can narrow what we are able to notice.