The poem tells the story of a couple who move from the Caribbean to the Bronx, and of the husband who works as a taxi driver. It begins with a feeling of romance, the two of them walking arm in arm, but the setting is already hard: stark housing projects and "gray fearful streets." The man drives day and night, trying to pay off his medallion, the permit that lets him run the cab. He comes home exhausted, makes love to his wife, then leaves again, while she is pregnant and tired. Out in the city, he is tempted by the women he meets, though he keeps coming back to her and to their two children.
The speaker watches all this with a quiet, sad distance. The ending is the bleakest part. One night he buys a ticket and vanishes "over the horizon," and the children are left to wonder about his face. The mood is wistful and weary, a feeling of love worn down by work and absence.