Each stanza tells of a job the speaker once had and how it stopped being a job and became something stranger. The fisherman eats a talking fish and can now speak only of blue. The bookbinder binds poems about flowers and ends up trapped in scent and the hum of bees. The grave-digger, surrounded by cool earth, can only sing to her shovel and the clay. The weaver gets tangled in her own web and becomes a tapestry of scraps and knots.
The pattern is the same every time: she gets too close to her materials, and they take over her. The tone is playful and fairy-tale-like, but there's something uneasy underneath. Every change is a kind of loss, since she can no longer speak freely, move freely, or simply be herself. The poem suggests how work, or any deep absorption, can reshape a person until it is all she is. The mood is odd, dreamy, and a little melancholy, with a hint of dark humor.