Dusk in this poem is a time when the present and the past seem to overlap. The speaker listens to the sounds of her neighborhood, and the first voice is real: a neighbor asking after her pregnant daughter, Sarah. Then the sounds begin to slip backward. She hears her grandmother, also named Sarah, calling about tomatoes, and a parent calling a child home for bath, bed and stories. Soon the voice is calling her own name, asking if she is up in a tree, and the speaker is a child again.
The mood is gentle, nostalgic and a little wistful. Evening chores, like her husband's clinking rake and the whispering broom, blur into her mother's work. By the end, the speaker seems to be addressing her mother directly, inviting her in. The poem suggests that family is passed along through names, routines and ordinary sounds, and that dusk is when they feel closest.