Watch a herd of zebras closely and the poem turns them into something stranger than animals. Their stripes shimmer and sway as they walk, and the speaker sees dance in it, though an odd one, with beats that don't quite fit together. The animals stop and start without warning, and in those pauses the "perfect" skins show their flaws. Their bold pattern, meant to hide them, seems out of place in the real world.
Then the poem shifts. A small spark, "a twinkle, a twist," brings an idea that opens "like a door to the moon." The speaker invites us to step through, and what waits there is understanding, something "so much more than any dream."
The mood begins in careful, slightly uneasy observation and lifts into wonder. The speaker seems to feel that looking hard at something familiar can lead to sudden insight, and that the title's "escape" is a way out of the ordinary through attention and imagination.