The poem is built like a diary kept by a woman whose days are full of work: mopping, mending, baking pies, killing hens, washing clothes. Short entries about family, church, and illness sit beside news of "terrible fighting in France" and meatless meals, so the war seems to hover at the edge of her ordinary life. The tone is flat and practical, and that flatness is the point.
Then, in the middle, comes "My boy, my poor boy!" It is the only line that breaks into open feeling. Judging by what follows, the boy has died, since later "Benjamin and Tuttle bring the body home." Yet the diary goes straight back to "Mop and mend," as if chores are the only way to keep going.
The last image is the strongest. Wet laundry piled on chairs looks "stark as so many ghosts." The speaker never says how much she grieves, but the mood of quiet, restrained sorrow fills that final picture.