The speaker’s observation of a crowd in a subway prompts the speaker to imagine petals on a wet tree branch. The brevity of time is striking between Line 1 and Line 2, creating the sense that life and experience occur in a fleeting instant. The brevity combines what is happening before the speaker’s eyes with what is happening in their mind. This then combines with the speaker’s reality. The three blend together to form yet a new reality. Sight and imagination work together, and the poem morphs into a conversation about how the sense of sight works with the concept of imagination to shape an individual’s perception of the world around them.

The poem’s rawness is emphasized because of its brevity. The basic, imagistic descriptions contribute to a sense of spontaneity. The poem catches the speaker’s act of visually processing the experience. Because the poem lacks verbs, it develops a quickness and creates a blending of the first and second lines. This quickness and blending also forms a sense of oscillation. This oscillation and blending works to create the ghost-like feel carried by the word “apparition” (Line 1). This is reinforced by the “faces” (Line 1), which appear spontaneously and briefly in the crowd.