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From a schooner stretched between the Sea of Japan and the Yukon, the speaker redefines ego as a thin connective fabric that can accompany poetry but never become it.

The opening seascape is grand enough to feel beyond self, which is why the later admission that ego has claimed it carries some shame. Still, the poem does not simply condemn ego; it lets it remain as thread, stitch, and companion to what is nearly lost. The waiting bird in the last line restores a sense of grace that ego itself could never manufacture.

From a seascape grand enough to feel selfless - 'a sexton off the Sea of Japan' curving 'under the North Star / in a billow all the way to the Yukon' on 'the long Schooner' - the speaker admits the standing there 'was not ego, / but it is ego now.' He then redefines ego downward: 'not power,, more inbetween,' 'a fabrick, a nit, / stitching,' 'the thread of those things / just about lost,' a friend but 'not what poetry / is.' Grace returns in the last line that ego could never manufacture: 'Every time across the mountains / a bird was waiting for me.'