The poem explores the boundary between the world of the living and the world of the dead above. The living world is presented as benign and pedestrian, a place of sandwich making and of simply going about one’s day. Heaven is then presented as somewhere both untouchable and immediate, with the dead themselves hovering just out of reach. The poem introduces elements of both earth and water; the speaker “lie[s] down in a field” (Line 6), while the dead “row themselves slowly” along a ghostly river (Line 4). In this way the river serves as the fragile boundary itself between these two worlds.