Our initial image from this poem, the ring of islands, is a feminine or yonic image. And from this image the poem continues to lay out different attributes of what Ní Chuilleanáin envisions as her own feminine style of writing.

The image of an island, land out at sea that is separate from the mainland, suggests the marginalization of women's writing. The islands "had started to grow" but were "Far from complete." Similarly, the writing of these women has been introduced to the world but there is a long way to go before women share equal space in the mainstream (before they join the mainland).

A boat "edged across the circular bay," and again the use of "circular" presents a yonic image. The term "edged" presents the idea of boundaries--of the limitations that keep the marginalized separate from the mainstream. "Circular" is then used again as Ní Chuilleanáin describes the boat as a "circular saw." This time, however, the yonic shape/image is used to juxtapose the phallic image of the saw tool. By placing these two images side by side Ní Chuilleanáin physically portrays the idea of edges and boundaries that separate not only the marginalized and the mainstream but also female and male poets.

The idea of boundaries also emerges regarding the boundary between water and sky. Ní Chuilleanáin says that the islands began to grow somewhere "around the line of sky." You can never quite tell where the sky ends and the ocean begins, for the line that we call the horizon is only our perception of where the boundary exists. This haziness, this fluidity, between the water and the sky, echoes the endless, boundless quality that exists between women and nature in Ní Chuilleanáin's writing. Setting this poem within the ocean only reiterates this "boundless" theme.

The sea, however, "expired in silence" as the saw sliced through the water. The dominant, overbearing male image subjugated the water--the women--to silence. Thus "the islands / Shuffled and swam"--the circles of islands "edged" to the west. The significance of the west could be a leftist/feminist suggestion and it could also refer to the West of Ireland which is considered the origin/inspiration for the Irish Literary Revival.

In the second stanza, Ní Chuilleanáin focuses on the other side of the boundary--the male counterpart. The pilot and the boat are compared with the pivot of a clockface which alligns masculinity with time, order, and rigidity in comparison to the fluidity and "chaos" alligned with the feminine. Words such as "evenly" and "Measuring" infer this notion of order and precision. The boat, like the hand on a clock, is "Measuring time at the edge of the water." This is now the third time "edge" has been used within the poem, never allowing us to forget that we are at a boundary line--crossing back and forth from one side to the other.

Ní Chuilleanáin ends her poem with the forehead of the pilot bisecting the horizon and a woman watching this man. With his body and his boat the pilot seems to establish a distinction between water and sky creating "the first horizon." His physicality directly "bisects" (notice the use of a mathmatic term to suggest this masculine preciseness/rigidity once more) a seemingly exact line between the two realms. But the woman who watches the man and the boat must be at a distance--she is the one "experiencing" the horizon line. And the phrase "first horizon" insinuates that other horizons will follow; she knows a true boundary is indistinguishable for the horizon line is always changing as the earth and sun rotate. Boundaries, therefore, are fluid, and identity and understanding are boundless.