Unity
The intimate encounter between the man and the woman is the driving force in the poem. The couple's physical union begets a spiritual connection that links them to the whole of humanity. This connection is forged by the creation of a new human life, and the lines of this connection are drawn in vivid and seemingly contradictory ways. The process of creating life and the relationship between the man, woman, and child is referred to as "this." Among the lines describing "this," one in the last stanza reads, "This is the maker and the made," implying a divine unity that emerges in human relationships.
The Cycle of Life
The creation of a new life dramatizes the cyclical course of the life process. This creation represents a cycle of time passing as the next generation comes into being. The line defining the creation of life as both a hunter and the chase implies both nourishment and danger. In a general sense, this is because the arrival of a baby bolsters humanity as a species, while also signifying that older generations are closer to death. Despite its challenges, however, this process is unavoidable. It is a natural part of life.
The course of life is connected to nature in the third stanza, which reads, "This is the blood's wild tree that grows / the intricate and folded rose." Here, human life not only mimics nature, but functions directly as nature through metaphor. This suggests that human life is not separate from nature.
Collective Experience
In the poem, a woman addresses her partner concerning the sexual act and period of gestation. The title of and descriptions in the poem posit this union and creation of new life as a collective human experience. The phrase "Woman to Man" is very general, meaning that it could be any woman addressing any man who is her partner. The process that occurs "silent and swift and deep from sight" inside the speaker's body occurs in every pregnant body. In the poem, the anaphora "this is" and the descriptions that follow this phrase unify every pregnant couple's experience into a collective one.
