A young woman works in a riverside hotel kitchen, waiting for the man she loves to join her. He promised to come after helping his parents with the butchering and the beans, but the time has passed and no letter has arrived. The speaker tells her story in plain, quiet speech, and that plainness makes her worry feel real. She is so anxious that she has barely eaten, and she is growing thin.
Cook is the poem's warm center. She insists he will come, saying she can feel it "in my bones," and she makes the speaker sit down to a plate of buttered buckwheat cakes. Her kindness feels like a small act of care in a rough place. The mood moves from loneliness and strain to gentle comfort, and then to sudden relief. The ending is simple and powerful: while she eats, she looks up and sees him walking down the hill in the rain. The poem doesn't describe her reaction, so the reader fills in the joy.