Check out those first eight words: "This is the place. And I am here" (71-2).
This is a key idea in this section of the poem: it isn't just about describing a place or telling a story. The speaker wants us to feel what it's like to really be in a place, to see it with our own eyes. This poem addresses intense personal experience, as opposed to the canned, tired versions that might get passed down to us from our culture, from what Rich calls "the book of myths."
So we know that being here is a big deal. But Rich won't let us get comfortable.
Now we have to ask ourselves: who is here? That's about to get more complicated.
It turns out our speaker has become a mermaid. And also a merman? Sort of confusing, huh?
All of a sudden, the speaker transforms into a new creature, one that combines the world of the humans and the world of the ocean.
But now she also combines the male and the female. It's almost as if our speaker were splitting in two.
Sure enough, this creature starts calling itself "we," where it was only "I" before.
Everything has changed. Our guide, the hero or heroine of our story, has changed.
We don't even know if he or she (it?) is still fully human, and it won't fit into a gender category at all: "I am she: I am he" (77).