The poem follows a mind that moves from restless hope to ruin. At first, the speaker's sleepless thoughts at 2 a.m. are starlings, scattering and regrouping, afraid that a cage is waiting somewhere. On other nights those same thoughts soar over green trees and clean streams, and the world seems to turn into something perfect: water like mirrors, running toward an endless sea.
Then the poem shifts with a single word, "Now." The starlings are starved and dying on blackened trees, above scorched earth. The imagery suggests that imagination, comfort and freedom have been used up or destroyed. The mood is bleak and grieving, but the last lines add a quiet ache. Even in this wasteland, nothing is as beautiful as "you," or as beautiful as birds crossing a clear blue sky. The poem suggests that love, or the memory of someone, survives as the one bright thing left, though it may only be something the speaker can remember.