Rounds gives us a brief, sharp portrait of a woman who walks out on her family. Billy Mary Ellen Hattie Sigsbee, described as "mad-brained" and oddly "macrocephalic," trades her children's milk and bread money for a highway atlas and a Bluebird bus, then heads down Route One with two strange companions: a deaf-mute ventriloquist and a pop-eyed popinjay. The names and the cast feel like a tall tale or a cartoon, and the long, tumbling name makes her seem both larger than life and slightly ridiculous.
The speaker sounds like a disapproving observer, almost a gossip. The final lines, "No regrets. / Selfish thing," are curt and judgmental, though the "No regrets" could be hers and the verdict the speaker's. The mood is comic on the surface, with its playful sounds and odd details, but there's a cold edge underneath. The jokes sit right beside real hunger and abandonment, and the poem leaves us unsure whether to laugh or judge.