The speaker imagines crossing from Maine into Canada at the Saint Stephen/Calais border, carrying packets of vegetable seeds and cheerfully admitting he plans to plant them there. The long list of names, from Detroit Dark Red Beets to Mortgage Lifter Tomatoes, is half the fun. He pictures a customs inspector, if he's "not a machine," loosening up, talking about his own garden, shaking hands, and swapping addresses and old corn seed. Gardening becomes a kind of friendly smuggling that turns a stranger into a neighbor.
Then the poem shifts abruptly to Daytona Beach, where Bob hurries Otis out of a bar. The speaker says he "silently acknowledges" this scene, so it seems to sit in his mind alongside the hopeful one. The closing lines describe people "not sown on fine soil" who dream of riding bikes as far from town as they can. The mood is warm and playful at first, then wistful. The poem sets people who get to grow and connect against those who only want to escape.