Hard to pin down at first, the poem reads like a dream slowly taking shape. It opens on a field of moonlight that looks cracked, with dark "midnight" filling the gaps. That white-and-black pattern is the first hint of the zebra in the title. Then wind arrives, and movement seems to create the animal: "motion dictates the forming of hooves."
From there the poem loosens its edges. The "four corners" of a frame dissolve, and the scene stretches across days, weeks, years and wide landscapes. The speaker seems to be watching or even making a picture that gradually grips "hand and mind," so the dream and the act of creating blur together.
The feeling that builds is calm, quiet wonder rather than excitement. By the end, the miles weave into a "waking web," a gentle embrace, and the speaker arrives at a soft, "understated" sense of freedom and flight. The mood is dreamy, fluid and quietly liberating.