Mike Stone's poem imagines a gathering at a funeral or graveside, where mourners stand in bad weather and face death as something silent and shut. The opening line, "We are not fair weather friends of death," suggests that these people keep showing up, even in rain and wind. The line "It's almost twenty years now" hints at a long habit of loss, though the poem never says whose death it means.
The speaker contrasts two groups. Some people lie down inside death's open mouth, tasting "the mustiness of eternity," while the mourners stay outside and come for the ones already taken. They read other people's grief and weep their own, so the grief feels both shared and private.
The ending turns uncertain. The body shrinks in death, but the soul is a question. The final lines say we can only describe the soul by where it isn't, which is a quiet admission of how little anyone knows. The mood is somber, patient, and humble.