Stanzas II & III Summary

Lines 13-21

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

• Interestingly, these lines are all about one thing: a ladder.
• You've probably seen a ladder like this before.
• It hangs off the side or the back of a boat, and dips into the water. For a diver, it's a way to get into the water.
• This poem emphasizes the separation between air and water, between the space above the water and the world below it.
• That's why this ladder matters in this poem. It's what allows you to cross between two worlds, to move from air to water.
• Rich takes her time here, pausing to think about this ladder, to make us look at it.
• What fascinates her is that the ladder has a different meaning once you've used it.
• For people who aren't divers, that ladder "hangs there innocently." It's nothing special; you could walk right by it. Or as she puts it, it's "a piece of maritime floss, some sundry equipment" (20-21).
• ("Maritime floss" means something like "a little string from the sea," and "sundry" just means "random" or "miscellaneous.")
• Both of these phrases are meant to emphasize how ordinary this ladder is.
• But once you have been on a dive, you know that going down the ladder is a major moment. We've probably all had this experience in some way.
• Before you drive a car, you don't really know or care what the different parts are, but once you do, you realize how important a gearshift is, why a brake pedal could mean the difference between life and death.
• Relying on a thing, even an ordinary thing, brings it to life and makes it special.

Lines 22-33

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

• Now we hear about the speaker's experience descending the ladder.
• For now, the speaker is still in familiar territory: "the oxygen immerses me" (24).
• We usually use the word "immerse" to talk about a liquid, when we submerge something. So this word choice makes it seem like the speaker is swimming in the air.
• We can feel a sense of safety, of normalness in "the clear atoms of our human air" (26-7). At first it seems like an obvious point, but our speaker wants to emphasize how we are dependent on the air.
• Since humans must breathe air in order to survive, it isn't normal for humans to enter the sea, to become part of that world.
• Even the equipment is unnatural; the flippers "cripple" (29) the speaker and make her "crawl like an insect" (30).
• This process of changing worlds is hard, awkward, and maybe a little scary, especially when you are alone.
• The speaker emphasizes loneliness again, reminding us that "there is no one to tell me when the ocean will begin" (32-3).