Max Reif imagines the hard questions of life as something alive, and something that will not be put off. They never politely ask whether we're ready. Some arrive with a crack, like a whip, but the speaker says the quiet ones are worse, because they start as a whisper at the edge of awareness and grow a little louder each day until they become a roar.
The middle of the poem turns to the speaker's own hesitation. The "divided self," the fear of risk, and the foot that steps forward and then stops all suggest someone who knows what they should face and keeps stalling. The questions have no patience for that. They act as jury and judge, refuse excuses, and finally become a lion that carries out the sentence.
The mood begins calm and creeping, then grows tense and threatening. The title makes the warning plain: ignoring a question doesn't make it go away, it only makes it more dangerous.