Dave Bonta's poem tells a small, odd story from Shackleton's Antarctic expedition: when the ship sank in the ice, the crew still rescued a banjo, which Shackleton called "vital mental medicine." The poem pictures the stranded men on Elephant Island, singing Stephen Foster songs over seal meat and dancing in a hut roofed by an overturned boat. The details are cheerful and a little ridiculous, like penguin feet frying in a pan on New Year's Day.
The speaker invites us to "picture" and "imagine" these scenes, which gives the poem the feel of a story told by someone who is fascinated by it. The mood shifts near the end. Shackleton asks for one last tune on the night he dies, and the banjo looks "pale as a bloodless cheek." The final image is quiet: lamp shadows keep dancing after the music stops. The poem suggests that small comforts, like music, matter most when everything else has been stripped away.