The poem plays on a pun: "plane" is both an aircraft and a woodworking tool. Bonta follows the joke through, giving the carpenter's plane a propeller (the knob), a tail (the tote, or rear handle), and landing gear (the mouth and blade). The wood becomes a sky, and the curling shavings become a wave that never stops breaking. The tone is playful, but it turns thoughtful. The second section says no one escapes the planet, and that the only way out is "farther in." Real travel, the poem suggests, may be a matter of going deeper into one thing rather than far away.
The last section moves to Japan, where, judging by the poem, the tool is used by pulling toward the body rather than pushing away. The speaker seems to admire this: there is "more power in the homeward pull." The mood is quiet, absorbed, and slightly wondering, with a craftsman's pleasure in fresh-cut wood and its clean scent.