A young man sleeps in the corner of a crumbling concrete bridge, and the poem follows him from that cold shelter back out onto the road. Everything around him feels worn down: the bridge is breaking apart, a dead armadillo lies on the road for the crows, and the asphalt paths made by crowds lead nowhere. The speaker seems to see him with sympathy. He carries "forgotten dreams" and the weight of ones his grandfather abandoned, and he appears alone and overlooked.
Yet the poem refuses to stay bleak. Where others see only ruin, the young man notices "remnants" and strange beauty, such as mushrooms in overgrown grass. Then a blue-green light breaks through the dark clouds in the east and calls to him. He pushes his hair back, gathers his things, and leaves. The mood begins in loneliness and decay, but it ends quietly hopeful, as though being forgotten has given him the freedom to find his own path.