The speaker begins with an ordinary day: baking for Christmas, walking a frozen road with the dog, keeping a friend company. Her opening question, "What will I see today?", sounds like quiet curiosity about what the day might hold. But the friend is lonely for her children, and that small detail sets the emotional tone.
In the second stanza, the focus shifts to a sea eagle that has turned up in Massachusetts, "5000 miles from home." It is a strange, faraway sighting, and the speaker answers it with questions rather than facts. She asks what the bird is lonely for, borrowing the word from her friend's sadness. The eagle becomes a mirror for human longing, a creature far from where it belongs.
The mood is gentle, wintry, and wistful. Nothing dramatic happens. The poem simply lets homely routine and a wandering bird sit side by side, and it ends by repeating the opening wonder: "what will he see?" Both the speaker and the eagle are left looking, uncertain, in unfamiliar cold.