The speaker comes across a dead green bird lying in a gutter in Singapore, and the sight seems to unsettle him. The bird is described as "still as humidity," a nice image that makes the heavy, airless heat feel almost like a presence. Its one wing has "taken flight" while the other stays behind, so even in death the bird seems split between leaving and staying.
Soon the speaker's own world tilts. He is "upside down," spinning like a samara, the winged seed that twirls as it falls, and he feels grateful for a stray cool breeze. Then he is in the gutter himself, looking up at the stars, like Wilde, whose famous line about gutters and stars the poem seems to recall. He and the bird are now companions of a kind.
The mood is quiet, dreamy and a little sad. The stars seem to speak, asking someone to remember a loved one, and the ending suggests that wings no longer matter. It feels like acceptance, though a bleak one.