Dave Bonta's poem is built from small, close observations, almost like entries in a notebook. A speaker sits outside, brushing snow off a chair, and watches the moon slip in and out of the clouds while trees creak in the dark. Next comes a foggy dawn, where juncos call back and forth, and the poem lets their call sound like a question: "Where are you?" Then the scene shifts. Daffodils from April give way to goldenrod, which the speaker calls "a more worldly yellow," and a faraway hurricane stirs a monarch butterfly into flapping its wings.
The speaker mostly stays in the background, noticing rather than explaining. The mood is hushed and attentive, with a touch of loneliness in the juncos' call and a sense of unease as the wind rises and the storm arrives from far off. Time seems to slide between winter and autumn, suggesting that everything in nature is connected and always moving.