The speaker informs his mother that any distance greater a particular length requires more than one pair of hands to measure it. The mother helps the speaker measure windows and the frameworks above curtains used to conceal fixtures, as well as walls and floors. The walls are described in acres, and the floors are compared to prairies.
The speaker's mother remains at the zero end of the measuring tape. The speaker ventures out in the house and reports the lengths back to his mother. Eventually he travels upstairs as the line feeds out and unreels the years between the speaker and his mother. Time passes, and the cord of connection between mother and child is referred to as both an anchor and a kite.
As though walking through space, the speaker goes through empty bedrooms and climbs the ladder to the loft. This is the breaking point where something in the speaker's relationship with his mother has to give. Two floors below, the mother pinches the remaining one-hundredth of an inch. The poem ends with the speaker reaching toward a hatch that opens on an endless sky. There, the speaker can either fall or fly.
