toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.
This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he
whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
Rich seems to be proposing androgyny as a solution to the prejudices women encounter in everyday life, and this is not the only place where she has spoken about a unification of the sexes. The image of an androgynous narrator is also present in her poem “The Stranger” from the same collection as “Diving into the Wreck”. 
 This sentiment is rejected in her later work “Natural Resources” where one line reads: “There are words I cannot choose again: / humanism androgyny”
Diving into the Wreck