Ambiguity
The wind is “terrific out of the west; the sun comes and goes.” The protagonist sees how the shadows “on the field” before her “deepen uniformly and spread like a plague.” Everything around her seems “so dull” that the woman is “amazed” she can even distinguish objects. And “suddenly” the light “runs across the land like a comber,” and “up the trees,” and goes again “in a wink.” It feels as if she has gone blind or “died.” When it comes again, “the light,” the woman holds her breath, and if it is stays she forgets about it until “it goes again.” This imagery evokes a rather depressing feeling, for it is clear that the protagonist is confused and disorientated.
Changing
“Unfortunately,” nature is “very much a now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t affair.” “A fish flashes,” then “dissolves in the water” before her eyes “so much like salt.” “Deer” ascend “bodily into heaven,” “the brightest oriole fades into leaves.” The protagonist admits that “these disappearances” stun her “into stillness and concentration.” People say of nature that it “conceals with a grand nonchalance,” and they say of vision that it is “a deliberate gift, the revelation of a dancer” who for the protagonist’s eyes “only flings away her seven veils,” for nature “does reveal” as well as “conceal.” This imagery evokes a feeling of awe. The protagonist adores and worships nature; she tries to find an answer to every secret, but fails.
A tiny part
“In orbit around the sun” we are moving “64,800 miles an hour.” The solar system “as a whole, like a merry-go-round unhinged, spins, bobs,” and “blinks” at the speed of “43,200 miles an hour along a course set east of Hercules.” Someone has “piped,” and we are “dancing a tarantella until the sweat pours.” The woman opens her eyes and notices only “dark, muscled forms curl out of water, with flapping grills and flattened eyes.” The she closes her eyes and “sees stars, deep stars giving way to deeper stars,” “deeper stars bowing to deepest stars at the crown of an infinite cone.” This imagery evokes a feeling of self-insignificance and unworthiness.
