A violent storm sweeps over the land, and in the middle of it a single girl keeps walking. The first stanzas pile up harsh images: lightning, crackling air, howling wind, clouds as dark as night. Then the rain floods everything, and the world drains down to "blacks and grays." Against that backdrop the girl is "a lone color," small but visible, and the poem never says what color she is.
The speaker watches her from the outside and doesn't name her feelings directly, but they show in the details. Her umbrella nearly splits, her figure shakes, and her cold hands grip the handle "for dear life." She stumbles, yet she never looks back. The mood is tense and bleak at first, then turns quietly hopeful. The final line, "the light only she can see," suggests the storm may stand for something hard in her life, and that her determination matters more than whether anyone else understands where she is headed.