The poem looks at a railway line that has been left to rot. It opens with a small chain of eating: snakes eat the rats, and the rats eat the wooden ties that hold the track together. Nature is slowly taking the line apart, and nobody is stopping it.
Then the poem turns to people. Some boys from town stole the crossing gate, and the speaker doesn't scold them. The gate "was there for the taking," because the line is forgotten and the freight train has gone. Without a train, the gate guards nothing.
The speaker sounds flat and observant, almost shrugging. There's no anger, only a quiet acceptance that this place has been given up on. The mood is empty and still, a little eerie. The title plays on this: a "crossing point" once meant a place where danger was managed, but now it is just a spot where something ended, and anyone can walk off with what's left.