Appendix A—Selected Image Patterns in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Image Pattern
Allusions (biblical): Adam/Eden/naming
References, Page number
“Eden before Adam gave names” (30),
liturgy of names (42), Adam almost an
afterthought, Adam’s curse (216), “Why
didn’t God let the animals in Eden name
the man; why didn’t I wrestle the
grasshopper on my shoulder and pin him
down till he called my name?” (220), “That
I fall like Adam is not surprising” (221)
Allusions (biblical): Jacob at
184, “risking the shrunken sinew in the
Peniel/wrestling/wounded in the hollow of hollow of the thigh” (205), “why didn’t I
thigh
wrestle the grasshopper on my shoulder
and pin him down till he called my name?”
(220), 264
Allusions (biblical): Speckled/Jacob’s flock 129, 145, 179, 239, 242, 266, 271
Allusions (biblical): Moses/Sinai
God to Moses on Sinai/ the fear (89), of
Back parts
fish, “I might see only a flash of back parts
fleeing” (186), 204-5, 264, 269
Allusions (religious/Christian, biblical):
Ark of the covenant (22), “The scales
other
would drop from my eyes; I’d see the trees
like men walking; I’d run down the road
against all orders, hallooing and leaping”
(30), new wineskin (32), “here, O Israel”
(62), cast out as Ishmael was cast (63),
grasshoppers & honey allude to John the
Baptist (65), pine processionary
caterpillars’ “circle of hell” (66), Elijah &
the prophets of Baal/woodpile (67, 69),
“time of Christ” (69), Nebuchadnezzar
(74), God’s promise of seasons (74), like a
leviathan breathing (75), all religions
recognize us as separated from our creator
(79), levitating saints (79), Christ’s
incarnation (80), Ezekiel’s quotation (93),
King David dancing naked before the ark
of the Lord (96), “For we are strangers
before thee, and sojourners, as were all our
fathers: our days on the earth are as a
shadow, and there is none abiding” (101),
incarnation and Christmas (102), “ ‘Why
leap ye, ye high hills?’” (113), “like a
house built on rock on rock on rock” (132),
unrolling scroll (140), “see through a glass
Allusions & references to literary,
darkly” (142), “What is man, that thou art
mindful of him?” (144), “The Lord God of
gods, the Lord God of gods, he knoweth . .
.” (144), “given, given with pizzazz, given
in good measure, pressed down, shaken
together, and running over” (146), “that
unrolled scroll has been shaken, so the
earth sways and the air roars” (151), devil’s
advocate/hell (161), “the kind that bruises
your heel as you bruise its head” (applied
to barnacles instead of snakes) (166)
“I feel like Ezra: ‘And when I heard this
thing, I rent my garment and my mantle,
and plucked off the hair of my head and of
my beard, and sat down astonied.’” (171),
“biologists have to go so far as to invoke a
‘heavy rain’” (173), “altar and cup” (179),
Christ (185-6), “ ‘Not as the world gives do
I give to you’; these fish are spirit food.
And revelation is a study in stalking: ‘Cast
the net on the right side of the ship, and ye
shall find.’” (186),
“Knock; seek; ask.” (192), plague of
locusts, “It’s every man to your tents, O
Israel” & quotation (209), “the bride who
waits with her lamp filled” (210), “only a
child could enter it” (213), “hanging
gardens of Babylon” (213), “as Adam
seems sometimes an afterthought in Eden”
(214), Christ and crown of thorns (216),
Adam’s curse (216), copperhead on a “rock
altar” (238), “What happened to manna?
Why doesn’t everything eat manna, into
what rare air did the manna dissolve that
we harry the free live things, each other?”
(238), “ ‘Your fathers did eat manna in the
wilderness, and are dead.’ There are no
more chilling, invigorating words than
these of Christ’s, ‘Your fathers did eat
manna in the wilderness, and are dead.’”
(240), “ ‘Our God shall come,’ it says in a
Psalm for Advent, ‘and shall not keep
silence; there shall go before him a
consuming fire, and a mighty tempest shall
be stirred up round about him.’” (259)
Heraclitus (epigraph & 64), Pascal &
scientific, and philosophical writing. Also
nursery rhymes.
Allusions/references to Thoreau
Allusions/references (visual art & artists)
Einstein (7), “the bear who went over the
mountain” (11), Stewart Edward White
(17), “yessir, three bags full” (19), Donald
E. Carr (19), Peter Freuchen (22), “buzzing
music of the spheres”/Pythagoras (not
named) (24), Galileo (25), Marius von
Senden’s Seeing (25), Ruskin (30), Jacques
Ellul: ‘Launch into the deep’” (33), Edwin
Way Teale (35, 38, 47), John Cowper
Powys (35), William Shakespeare (35),
Saint-Exupéry (50), Pliny (52, 62, 91, 93,
113, 118, 217), J Henri Fabre (55, 58, 63,
65-7), Arthur Koestler (70, 92) and Kepler
(70), Stephen Graham’s The Gentle Art of
Tramping (80), Goethe’s Faust (83),
Michael Goldman poem (83), Orpheus
(85), Rosanne Coggeshall (86), Pascal (88),
Dorothy Dunnett (89)
Alice in Wonderland
“I propose here to keep what T. called ‘a
meteorological journal of the mind” (11),
quote: ‘What a rich book might be made
about buds!’ (15), “As T. says, I return to
my senses” (32),
“building more spartan mansions, o my
soul” and “a chair (two for company, as the
man says)” (214)
“like a photographer’s negative of a
landscape” (10), photography professor just
happened to see a bird die in mid-flight
(17), Van Gogh (22, 69, 75), seeing with
camera vs. without: “my own shutter
opens, and the moment’s light prints on my
own silver gut” (31), da Vinci (38), Arabic
calligraphy (55), secrets-of-nature movie
(56), invention of clay modeling (62),
Muslims ban representational art (62), di
Chirico’s “Nostalgia of the Infinite” (62-3),
dismal colored photograph (75), Tate
gallery (82), canvas (83), viewfinder,
Cubism, Picasso, trompe-l’oeil (83),
snapshots/film/reels/mind as camera (84-5,
93)
Klee, Picasso, “mob dance in Breughel”
(127),
“But Van Gogh: a study it is not. This is
Anchorite/anchorhold, mystics, saints,
Thomas Merton, etc.
the truth of the pervading intricacy of the
world’s detail: the creation is not a study, a
roughed-in sketch; it is supremely,
meticulously created, created abundantly,
extravagantly, and in fine” (134), Blake
said, “He who does not prefer Form to
Colour is a Coward!” (136), photographic
plate (198), Baroque painter Tiepolo’s
painting of Christ with goldfinch (216),
Van Gogh (240)
Anchor-hold (2), men on Palomar (24),
Gnosticism and physics (30), Martin Buber
quoting Mendel quoting Rabbi Elimelekh
(30), “the literature of saints and monks of
every order East and West, under every
rule and no rule, discalced and shod” (32),
literature of illumination reveals, “litanies,”
“Ailinon, alleluia!” (33), liturgies of names
(42), J Henri Fabre, who devoted his life to
the study of insects . . . unholy revulsion
(63)
Honeybee (medieval religious symbol)
(63),
“we ought to have praying mantises in our
churches,” “god, like an oracle” (64),
“levitating saints” (79),
“augenblick” “Verweile doch? Last
forever! Who hasn’t prayed that prayer?
But the augenblick isn’t going to verweile.
(83), Thomas Merton’s suggested
amendation to the Lord’s Prayer: Take out
‘Thy Kingdom come’ and substitute ‘Give
us time!’ (85), mystics of all creeds
experience presence of God on
mountaintops (89), Hasidism’s tradition of
hallowing the things of creation (94),
Martin Buber: “infinite ethos of the
moment” (95),
Creek as answer to Merton’s prayer (102),
Eskimo and priest “Why did you tell
me?”/”never lose a holy curiosity” (122),
El Greco saints (127), Kabbalistic
“Splintering of the Vessels” (129),
“ ‘Every religion that does not affirm that
God is hidden, said Pascal flatly, ‘is not
true’” (144) anchor-hold (176), Julian of
Arrow/archer/arrowhead
Bell
Norwich, the great English anchorite (177),
as if Buddha had been expecting the fall of
an apple” (187), “Martin Buber quotes an
old Hasid master who said, ‘When you
walk across the fields with your mind pure
and holy, then from all the stones, and all
growing things, and all animals, the sparks
of their soul come out and cling to you, and
then they are purified and become a holy
fire in you.’ This is one way of describing
the energy that comes, using the
specialized Kabbalistic vocabulary of
Hasidism.” (198),
cloud of unknowing (202)/Heisenberg’s
Principle of Indeterminacy, “some
physicists now are a bunch of wild-eyed,
raving mystics” (202), “These physicists
are once again mystics, as Kepler was”
(204), “Lucas place is paradise enow”
(211), “How could anything be amiss?”
[Julian quote inserted into body of text
without quotations—appropriated from
page 177] (216), martyrdom, “crown of
thorns” (216)
hellish hagiography (229)
dark baptismal lagoon (234)
“apophthegmata, the sayings of fourth- and
fifth-century Egyptian desert hermits.”
Abba Moses (257), death of the self, “fuge,
tace, quiesce” (258), “ ‘For the Heavenly
Father desires that we should see,’ said
Ruysbroeck, ‘and that is why He is ever
saying to our inmost spirit one deep
unfathomable word and nothing else.’”
(261)
“lightning marks” on arrows, “I am the
arrow shaft” (12), “draw huge arrows” to
hidden pennies (14-15), arrowheads “are
there arrowheads here?” (19), copperhead
as archer in cover; also God is archer (89),
arrowheads (90), 100, 258
“I resound like a beaten bell” (12), “I had
been my whole life a bell, and never knew
it until at that moment I was lifted and
struck” (34), mantis egg case “shaped like a
bell” (54), “bell rang” (61), “waiting like a
Blood
Blood from the throat and wrists
Cast
Cat /old tomcat, fighting tom
“Catch . . . if you can”
hollow bell with a stilled tongue” (258),
“cast-iron bell hung from the arch of my
rib cage” (261)
diving bell (155)
“I felt again the bell resounding faint under
my ribs” (263), 268, 271
Paw prints in blood (1),“blood sign of the
passover” (2), “bloody bites” (6),“this book
is the straying trail of blood” (12), starling
blood (37), bird leg stumps, wolves (42),
turtle’s oxygen into blood (46), 55, coldblooded and yellow- and green-blooded
(64), blood/bloodroot (99), bloody meat
(112), goldfish’s red blood cells (124-5),
molecule of hemoglobin (127), Henle’s
loop (133), red blood stream in shimmering
dots inside a goldfish’s tail (145), blood
flukes 173, mouthful of blood (175), 189,
192, muskrat blood disease (193), 209,
bloodied surface of earth (219), 221, coldblooded, blood-filled, eyeball and blood
(225), 227, 228, 229,
230, 232, 233, 240, 241, 242, 249, 251,
lifeblood 256, 267, 269
209, 221, 234
Casting for arctic char (43), shadows
cast/invention of sculpture (a kind of
cast/process of casting) (62), “cast as
Ishmael was cast, out, with a flinging
force” (63), “Let us hasten to cast a veil
over these horrors” (64), earthworm
castings (95), cast the net on the right side
of the ship (186), tulips had cast their
leaves on my path, flat and bright as
doubloons (245), leaf “cast upon the air”
(253)
Cat, the old fighting tom makes pawprints
in blood, resembling roses (1,2), mantis
cleans face “like a cat” (55), “That tomcat
that used to wake me is dead” (98), orange
kitten called “Sweet Dreams” (114), great
predator cats that occasionally eat their
cubs (169), squirrel “like a cat” (246),
Eskimos play cat’s cradle (249), “I used to
have a cat, an old fighting tom” (270)
76, 77, catch grace as a man fills his cup
Chomp
Clouds
Color-patches
Coot
Dance
Devil
Dog
Door (to present)
Knock/ask/seek
under a waterfall 79, 186 fish/Christ, “hope
to catch him [the spirit] by the tail” (205),
“nature seems to catch you by the tail”
(236)
227, 234, “It is chomp or fast” (2x) (237)
10, 11, 13, 15, 20, 21, 22, 23, cloud ceiling
(43), 56, 86, . . .
“In general the newly sighted see the world
as a dazzle of color-patches . . .” (27), “I
saw color-patches for weeks . . .” (29), 30,
82, 128, 245
Silly-looking coot (44-5), c. consider this
south (47), 53, 98, 147
“a dancer who for my eyes only flings
away her seven veils” (16), dancing a
tarantella (21), carrion beetle dancing on its
pin (52), dance to keep warm (63), dance to
a might tune . . . or our every arabesque
and grand jeté is a frantic variation on our
one free fall” (68), “I fall, or I dance” (87),
“I dance”, “King David danced naked
before the ark of the Lord”, “let rip; and
dance where you can” (96), sharks “need
dance” (98),
100, “mob dance in Breughel” (127), the
universal dance (234), pointed like a
dancer’s toes (249), grand jeté en l’air
(258), stageful of innocent dancers who
will never be asked to perform (263), hand
knife shaped like a dancing skirt (265)
“the world has signed a pact with the
devil,” “covenant,” “signing of the
contract” (181),
As hounds pursue hares (82), 109, dogleg
of a dog’s leg (138), barking dog, “A dog
I’ve never seen before, thin as death, was
flushing rabbits” (148), Time with his
“great dog Death” (181), vicious dog (212),
“Eskimos dry . . .fish . . . as feed for dogs,”
“bearing in its jaws the leg of a deer” (249)
“might not be able to close the door”(50),
great door that opens on the present (80,
81) ,
“you open the door and all heaven and hell
breaks loose” (131),
“Knock; seek; ask” (192), “calling like a
Dragonfly/dragonfly larvae
Dreams/nightmares
Eskimos
Fire/flame/oriflamme/flamingo
child beating on the door” (205), 269
Hibernating dragonfly larvae (46), 117,
horrible lip (136-7, 146, 168), dragonfly
nymphs devouring newly emerging
dragonflies (168), interaction with
horsehair worm (172), 188, “free as
dragonflies” (202), 204,
“pictures you dream as the final wave
heaves you up on the sand” (2), nightmare
(12), “the beautiful dream at the moment of
being dreamed” (13), “utterly focused and
utterly dreamed” (33), “dreaming winter”
(46), nightmare Polyphemus (61), utterly
dreamed (70), “waking from a dream we
can’t recall” (86), kitten called “Sweet
Dreams” (114), “dream fins” (124), dream
about time (140), dream about luna moths
mating, eggs hatching, fish in the bed (15961), “I’m the one having the nightmares”
(179)
young girls playing on one another’s vocal
chords (13), light-blindness (22), killing
wolf with frozen knife, “stone men” (42),
sled dogs (50), 69, shamans (99), seal hunt
(114), E. and priest on hell: “Why did you
tell me?” (121-2), summer life, bird-skin
shirts (182-84), as simile 189, hunting
muskrats (193), 202, “Do the Eskimos’
faces shine, too?” (206), glacier (212),
shaman: ‘Life’s greatest danger lies in the
fact that men’s food consists entirely of
souls’ (239), belief in many
souls/reincarnation (240), caribou hunt
(248), prayer tunnel 257, 265
Hudson’s Bay 42, 252
“It ever was, and is, and shall be, everliving Fire, in measures being kindled and
in measures going out” (epigraph),
flamingo (2), “setting the prairies on fire
was a well-known signal,” “whole show
has been on fire from the word go,”
“everywhere I look I see fire,” “the whole
world sparks and flames”(9), flame 22, the
tree with the lights in it “buzzing with
flame,” “flood of fire” (33), 34, flame,
burnt books/fire (39), 40, chickadee like a
Fish
Flood
Frog and the giant water bug
“fireball” (47), fire as verb, sparks as
simile (59), fireplace (62), 67, 69, fireball,
spray of sparks, hoop of flame, arsonist of
the sunny woods (76), 80, root-flame in the
heart (82), igniter/fireball (89), 90, 92,
divine sparks/hallowing fire (94), belief
that salamanders could put out fires (110),
tulip-tree flower shaped like flame (111),
burnt books (137), fires (143), lit by the
fire from a star that has only begun to die
(179), “sparks of their soul” and “holy fire”
(198), 205, fire/flame/prairie fire, smallarms fire (209-10), “as if a man on fire
were to continue calmly sipping tea (245),
251, consuming fire (259), 271
Arctic char 43, 53, 83
See also goldfish/Ellery pattern
Flood of fire (33), Tinker Creek flooding
chapter 9 (147-158), “After a [flood] nature
‘stages a comeback’” (161), “where a flash
flood would reach me” (217)
introduced on pp. 5-7, “the frog skin, of
course, is utterly gone” (9), “where I had
seen the giant water bug sip a frog” (39),
“the giant water bug sips frogs” (63),woven
with the tomcat and other image patterns–
“the giant water bug I saw is dead” (98),,
128-91, tying in with others (137), 178, “I
could imagine the snake, like the frog
sucked dry by the giant water bug,
collapsing to an empty bag of skin” (226),
263, “Downstream at the island’s tip where
the giant water bug clasped and ate the
living frog, I sat and sucked at my own dry
knuckles. It was the way that frog’s eyes
crumpled. His mouth was a gash of terror;
the shining skin of his breast and shoulder
shivered once and sagged, reduced to an
empty purse; but oh those two snuffed
eyes! They crinkled, the comprehension
poured out of them as if sense and life and
been a mere incidental addition to the idea
1 The paragraph on p. 128 is a marvel of tying-­‐in, linking together a number of different image patterns: the giant water bug and its predations, redwings and the Osage orange tree, goldfish, snakeskin, and the tree with the lights in it Frogs (other)
Globe/planet/world
2
of eyes, a filling like any jam in a jar that is
soon and easily emptied; they flattened,
lightless, opaque, and sank. Did the giant
water bug have the frog by the back parts,
or by the hollow of the thing? Would I eat
a frog’s let if offered? Yes.” (264)2 , “They
die their daily death as utterly as did the
frog” (265), the giant water bug ate the
world (271)
18, 45, 116-118, 211
“planet,” “canary would perch on the globe
and sing,” “all his life, wandering the earth,
he felt as though he had a canary on the top
of his mind, singing” (3), “the heaven and
the earth and all in between, thinkest thou I
made them in jest?” (7), “why why in the
blue-green world” (49), mantis egg case
described as “northern hemisphere of an
egg cut through its equator” (54), earth and
season (74), planet (75), innocence is a
better world (81), world (82-3), “the whole
earth trembles, rent and fissured, hurled
and drained” (95), planet (97), “this old
rock planet gets the present for a present on
its birthday every day” (102),
world without end (103), planet (123),
earth/created world (128-9)
enormous relief globe (138-43), 141, 142,
144-46, whole world, whole earth in flood
(152), intricate world (161), “whole world
is an incubator for incalculable numbers of
eggs” (167), the only world I know (176),
“the world is a monster” (177), “death is
spinning the globe” (180), “the world has
signed a pact with the devil” (181), worlds
beyond (202), world (204), jumped off the
edge of the w. (211), “new light on the
In the last few sentences, Dillard ties this image to the religious themes and biblical
images—that of the Moses, when hidden in a rock’s cleft, seeing “the back parts of God”
and also the biblical image of Jacob wrestling at Peniel with an “angel” who injured him
in the hollow of the thigh. I don’t know why Dillard suddenly thinks of eating frog’s legs
just then; that seems to be a lyrical, humorous leap all her own.
Goldfish, Ellery Channing
Grasshopper/locust
Splinter: puff puff
Honeybee
Horns
Horses
Splinter: Horsehair worm
intricate texture of things int eh world,”
“the world is more chomped than I’d
dreamed” (227),
“thorn in the flesh of the world” (234),
world (240), “call the world old,” “the
world is old,” “that the world could ever
become new,” “the world of the spirit”
(241), earth, “heave the world,” “great rock
heart of the earth” (258), “the real world,
not the world gilded and pearled” (259),
“my God what a world” (261), planet with
maple key image (268),
water bug that ate the world (271)
Can draw a goldfish (18), “my goldfish,
Ellery Channing” (50), 109, 123-5, 127-9,
137, 145, 146, like goldfish in bowls (155),
goldfish lays 5,000 eggs (167), Ellery
(168), point of goldfish is pizzazz (180)
“saw it breathe, puff, puff (64-5), 166, with
horsehair worm (172-3), how grasshoppers
become locusts (207-210), 212, 229, 235
puff puff/ puff of wind (57, 92)
Honeybees and paper wasps (47), beeeating wasp: “If the bee is heavy with
honey, the wasp squeezes its crop ‘so as to
make her disgorge the delicious syrup,
which she drinks by licking the tongue’ [of
the dying bee]”(63), partial to honey (65),
“like mantises outside a beehive” (193),
honeybee (211), December bee, Romans
thought bees could be killed by echoes
(261)
Insects “cased in clacking horn” (64),
“grasshoppers . . . short-horned, longhorned” (207)
Horns of the altar, horns of ungulates,
233, 239, 242*, 255, 264, 268
White mare (3), drawing a horse (18),
white mare Itch (52), Equestrian sculpture
in Pittsburgh (93), Pliny’s wind-foals 52,
93, 113, Jean White’s dead horse 116-7,
sun’s energy equals 4500 horsepower,
“these ‘horses’” (118), “bloated dead
horse” in flooded river (156), like a bronc
210, “bumblebees the size of ponies”
(215), horse’s hoofmark: white mare Itch
Illuminate/illumination
Illusion
Koran
Latin phrases
Lights on/off
Light/lights (all)
250, Twilight/Midnight, “horse of a
perpetually different color” (263)
Horsehair worm: 119, 134, 172, 229
8, 10, literature of illumination (33), 43, 68,
80
25, 29, 43, 75
“In the Koran, Allah asks, ‘The heaven and
earth and all in between, thinkest thou I
made them in jest?’ (7)
“trailed from the egg case to the base of the
Mason jar in a living bridge that looked
like Arabic calligraphy, some baffling text
from the Koran inscribed down the air by a
fine hand” (55)
“Muslims, whose religion bans
representational art as idolatrous, don’t
observe the rule strictly; but they do forbid
sculpture, because it casts a shadow” (62)
“ ‘They will question thee concerning what
they should expend. Say: ‘the abundance.’
’ –The Koran” (260)
Pascal’s Deus Absconditus (7, 262), ex
nihilo (10, 131), Ad majorem gloriam (121,
170), via negativa (184), vive la chance
(235), sub specie aeternitatis (240), Devil’s
summa theologica (229), “fuge, tace,
quiesce” (258), Habeas corpus! Deus
absconditus! Veni! Veni! (262)
9, “the mountains are going on and off like
neon signs” (10), 20, 21, 33, 59, 144, light
come on so suddenly [seeing the muskrat]
(191), “tree with the lights in it does not go
out” (242)
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 17, 19, 20, 21,
22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34,
twilight 39, 43, 49, 51, 54, 56, 62, 63, 68,
69, 70, 78, lightning & sunset 79, 80, 82,
83, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, lighter 90, lightning
92, 93, lighthouse 94, sun/star/solar 96-7,
99, 100, 101, 102, 103, sun 107, 108, 109,
111, 113, 114, 115, 117, 118, 120, 121,
123, 124, 125, 126, 128, 129, 142, 143,
144, 146, sunshine 147, 148, 149, 152, 156,
161, 167, 168, solar 174, stars 175, sun
176, star 179, 184, 185, lightning-quick
187, headlight & sun 190, 191, 195, 202,
Magician/show/circus tent/peep
Magician pattern splinter: Rabbits (links to
magician/show set)
Mason jar/jar
Mirror
sun 204, 205, sun/shine 206, sun 211,
flashlight 212, 214, 215, 216, 217,
sun/starlight/waves/particles 218,
goldfinch/lighted on 221, 223, 224, 225,
227, 235, 238, 241, 242, 243, 244, sun 249,
251, 254, lighted on (as verb) 255, 256,
257, star/suns 260, 263, 265, 266, 267, 268,
270, 271
Show (9), “some sort of carnival magician
has been here, some fast-talking worker of
wonders who has the act backwards,”
“bland, blank-faced magician” “presto
chango,” “show,” “abracadabra,” “rabbits
disappear into the black hat forever” (11)*,
“now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t,” “nowyou-don’t-see-it, now-you-do,” “one show
to a customer” (16), “want to climb the
blank blue dome as a man would storm the
inside of a circus tent, . . . rent a hole in the
top, peep, and if I must, fall” (31), starling
show (37), 43, mask (44), collapsed tent
(61), dragonfly larvae’s lip “forms a ‘mask’
that covers much of the face of the larvae”
(136), muskrat show (195), “too facile to
pull everything out of the hat and say that
mystery vanquishes knowledge” (241), 266
Dome (splinter): “blue dome clamps down
over me like a lid on a pot,” moon climbs
up or down the inside of the dome (23),
heaven’s blue dome (62), dome 263, blank
blue dome
148, rabbit paths 214, young cottontail
rabbit 215, unthinkable parasite found in
rabbit’s belly (228)
Mantises hatching in Mason jar (55), 56,
60, 61, 67, mantises in the Mason jar
(168),[jar: grasshoppers in jars become
locusts (208, 209), “bloody jar squirming
with yard after yard of some unthinkable
parasite he had just found in the belly of a
rabbit” (228)], “We’re all in this Mason jar
together, snapping anything that moves”
(239), 264
1, “lay a mirror flat on the snow” (43), 71,
90, microscope’s m. (121), John Dee’s
mirror in space, “see through a glass
Mockingbird that dropped gracefully in
flight/other mockingbirds
* Mockingbird pattern splinter: “tree falls
in the forest” conundrum/always linked
with the free falling mockingbird
Moon
Mothers
darkly” (142), 239, ceremonial headdress
243
“I saw a mockingbird make a straight
vertical descent” (7-8)—linked with “tree
falls in forest” conundrum, “southern birds
like the mockingbird easily extended their
ranges” (47), “The mockingbird that
dropped furled from the roof” (98),“The
mockingbird’s invention is limitless; he
strews newness about as casually as a god”
(105), “mockingbird singing . . . Why is it
beautiful?” (106)—mentioned again in
conjunction with “tree falls in forest,”
“mockingbird flew by with a red berry in
its beak . . .[which] glowed like a coal from
some forge or cauldron of the gods”(114),
birdsong [a splinter from the mockingbird]
(137), “mockingbird’s free fall” (146),
“graceful mockingbird that falls” (180),
“the mockingbird falls” (205), “Did the
mockingbird that plunged from the rooftop
. . . bear in its buoyant quills a host of
sucking lice?” (238)
“The fact of his free fall was like the old
philosophical conundrum about the tree
that falls in the forest. The answer must be
that beauty and grace are performed
whether or not we will or sense them. The
least we can do is try to be there” (8)
“What if I fell in a forest: would a tree
hear?” (92)
“the tree that falls in the forest” (106)—
linked to mockingbird image and
questions: why why why, what is the
meaning meaning meaning? Why is it
beautiful? Why the extravagance of the
score?
23, “reached for the moon” (29), gibbous
moon (38), full moon (69), 5 moons of U.
(70), Kepler and moon (71), Cherokee
legend about the moon goddess (108),
moon’s texture (138), “ ‘Some cannot sleep
well in a white tent under a full moon’”
(218), reflection of the moon (250)
“Pummeling a mother for milk” (1)
57, lacewings eating eggs as she lays them
Muskrats
Old world/new world
Patting the puppy
Penny/coppers/coin/doubloon
Waste and extravagance
Spend/spendthrift
Gift/surprise
Splinter: pearl of great price
(168), (eggs hatching within mother’s body
and devouring her from within (169),
mummy case (170)/extended metaphor that
plays on “mummy,” “Either this world, my
mother, is a monster, or I myself am a
freak” (177), “Adult muskrats, including
their own mothers, often kill them if they
approach too closely (194), 223, 265-6
Stalk muskrats (20), muskrats won’t show
(31), cute pictures of muskrats (41),
muskrats are out (46), 95, 118, dead in
flood (153), hunted by Eskimo (183),
stalking m. (184-204), 235
“saw a new world” (32), “How can an old
world be so innocent?” (41), “the meadow
was clean, the world new, and I washed”
(208), 212, “I feel like I’ve just been born”
(213), “festering world,” “the world is old,
a hungry old man, fatigued and broken past
mending,” “hungry world,” “only the
newborn in this world are whole” (238),
241, 242
77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 85, 92, 102
14, 15, 16, 90, old gold coin (113), Ellery
cost 25 cents (124), pennies found (146),
“casket of antique coins” (152), 186,
doubloons (245), 256, hiding a penny (262)
“pearl of great price” 33, 85
gift/surprise: 14, “what you see is what you
get” (15), 16, 33, “flood left them a gift”
(158), 205, illustrated guide to insect pests
(229), 251, 266
spend/spendthrift: “spendthrift economy;
though nothing is lost, all is spent” (65),
“do you think I won’t sell all that I have to
buy it?” (85), expensive microscope (126),
spendthrift genius (127), “money does
indeed grow on trees” (186), 260, 269
pay/rent: price I would willingly pay (221),
234
accounting: 262
waste/cheap: “Wouldn’t it be cheaper to
leave them on the tree in the first place?”
(65), cheapness of fecundity (160), waste
(161), “less than a dime a dozen,”
Pipe
Play/pinochle/game/baseball (includes
playing music: pipe, tarantella)
Polyphemus moth
Praying mantis
“Wonderful things, wasted” (175)
extravagance: 9, deciduous trees 65, e. of
birdsong (107), newt’s e. posture (110),
127, Henle’s loop (134), “extravagant
landscape of the world” (146), 160, “more
than extravagance; it is holocaust, parody,
glut” (168), “e. takes on a sinister, wastrel
air” (179), 220, 266
“We’re played on like a pipe” (13),
“Someone has piped and we are dancing a
tarantella” (21),
plumbing pipes (124, 118), pipette (120),
water pipe—a musical instrument (165)
“are we all playing pinochle in the bottom
of the boat?” (7), “It is a fierce game I have
joined because it is being played anyway, a
game of both skill and chance, played
against an unseen adversary” (12), “we’re
played on like a pipe” (13), “blind man at a
ball game” (31), “I see the game purely”
(32), “get up a pinochle game . . . for half a
penny a point” (43), “In lieu of a pinochle
game” (70), major league baseball (81),
“one entire spring I played pinochle,”
“softball” (107), universal drama/players
(169), Aeschylus/tragedy (170-1), “play the
last bloody act offstage” (189), Stalking is
“like pitching or playing chess” and
“stalking is a game played in the actual
present” (200), “I am the skin of water the
wind plays over” (201), “played on by
wind, sun, and shade” (218),
“Can it possibly, ludicrously be for this that
on this unconscious planet with my
innocent kind I play softball all spring, to
develop my throwing arm?” (264)—
connected with frog and giant water bug,
and with biblical sacrifices (wave and
heave offerings/throw),
Introduced on 59-61 (The horror of the
fixed), 70, 99, 239
Praying mantis egg cases (54), in Mason
jar (55-6), can eat hummingbirds (55),
mantis laying eggs (56-8)
59, 63, 64, 70, 99, 108, 135, 152, 167,
(devouring one another) 168, “not a people
Pummel
Redwinged blackbirds, redwings
Reflections (in water, in windows, glass)
Roses
Sacrifice/altar/offering
Sail/ship/wreck/boat/sea anchor
Shadow Creek
Sharks
in the world who behaves as badly as
praying m. (177), as simile (188), like
mantises outside a beehive (193), 211, 212,
216, 220, 231, 235
Pummeling a mother for milk (1)
Something pummels us (13)
“It was as if the leaves of the Osage orange
had been freed from a spell in the form of
red-winged blackbirds; they flew from the
tree, caught my eye in the sky, and
vanished (16), 128*, redwings scatter 201,
208
22, 23, 43, 44, 69, 71, in storefront window
(81), 142, 185, 213, 239, 243, 250,
“painted with roses” (1)
“rose-grown field” (55)
“egg cases hung like roses . . . bouquet”
(56), wild rose (57), time-lapse
photography of roses(142), wild rose
brambles (213),
“roses of starvation, in a French
physician’s description; and those who
starved died covered with roses” (265)
“Blood of some unspeakable sacrifice or
birth” (1), stained altar stone (175)
242, 249, wave breast of thanksgiving 259,
264, 267, 271
Sea anchor/connected to anchor-hold and
anchorite (2), sail on solar wind, rig a giant
sail, spread your spirit till you yourself are
a sail (33), “wrecks of schooners” (95),
“someone in full sail is becalmed” (97),
“lone sailor sans sextant in a ketch on the
open ocean” (128), “as at the railing of a
steamboat” (155), whaler trading with
Eskimo (183), fishing ship (186), migrating
water striders “sail over meadows,
‘phantom ships in the air’” (219),
“Splintered wreck” (242), “like a sail”
(246)
“blue subterranean stream that chills
Carvin’s Creek and Tinker Creek” (63), 64,
68, 134, 265
Beautiful sharks in a feeding frenzy—“the
sight held awesome wonders: power and
beauty, grace tangled in a rapture with
Silver eels
Skull
Snakes/Copperhead/Snakeskin (with
aquarium)/other snakes
“So startlingly set down and don’t nobody
know why”
Here/where we so incontrovertibly are
Spider
Starlings
Steers
violence” (8)
“I never ask why of a vulture or shark, but I
ask why of almost every insect I see” (63)
“The sharks I saw are roving up the coast.
If the sharks cease their roving, if they still
their twist and rest for a moment, they die”
(98)
“roiling with beauty like the sharks” (103)
“Sharks limned in light” (146)—linked to
goldfish, dragonfly, pennies,
mockingbird’s free fall, extravagance,
intricacy, freedom, light
“Were those sharks sliced with scars, were
there mites in their hides and worms in
their hearts?” (238)
107, 219
Cat’s skull (1), canary that sings on the
skull (7), coot’s skull (44), [numbers]
“would split my skull” (167), “hairy
woodpecker beating his skull on a pine”
(248), Eskimo old women with daughter’s
face on skull (265)
Copperhead: 4, “Any copperhead anywhere
is an archer in cover; how much more so is
God!” (89), 222-226, 238, 245, 262
Snakeskin/aquarium: 18, 72, 74, 76, 83,
“The snake whose skin I tossed away”
(99), 129, 148
other snakes: snakes in ravine/herpetologist
(18), hibernating water snakes (46), 52, 55,
mythical hoop snake (76), 149, 155, 193,
199
2, 12, 132
so incontrovertibly are: 128, 145, 240
Valerie Eliot, T.S. Eliot’s widow,
recounting the cab driver asking Bertrand
Russell, “what’s it all about?” (168-9)
“I allow spiders the run of the house,” large
s. will suck hummingbirds (50), watching
web-building, identifying with s. (51), tiny
baby spiders by the hundreds (52), 99, 2345
35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 53, 98, 137, 262
4, 5, 9, 13, 56, 111, 148, 153, grilling
whole steers (215), starlight on s. (218),
263
Suck
Sycamore
Tear-shaped island
Ten percent/tithe
Thorns (splinter from rose pattern)
Tinker Creek
Tinker Mountain
*Tree with the lights in it
(see Appendix B for details)
Tree with the lights in it—splinter: cedar
Veils/striptease
Woodpile/Elijah (splinters from biblical
pattern and fire/flame patterns)
Giant water bug/frog (6, 10), turtle
breathing through cloacal opening (46),
large spiders “suck hummingbirds” (50),
“sucking, frigid pools” (63), 87, 90, blind
cicadas sucking trees—“suck, suck
blinded, suck trees” (97), “nymphs sucking
water into the gilled rectums” (136),
Eskimo suck sewing thread (183), water
striders suck insects dry (189), sucker 210,
228, 229, 230, 232, 233, 239, “suck some
thin sugar of energy” (253), prayer tunnel
dream (257), 258, 263
4, 5, 9, 10, 19, 31, 45, 85, most intrinsically
beautiful word in English (86), Xerxes sees
the tree with the lights in it (links to tree
with the lights in it pattern), a sycamore
(87-89), 92, 94, 95, 98, 100, 101, 158, 164,
253, 258, 263
4, 19, 263
“OF all known forms of life, only about ten
percent are still living today (137), 229,
devil’s tithe (233), 240
Rose thorns (57, 58) thorns from roses
(64), crown of thorn s. thistle thorns,
thorny sorrow, thorny beauty of the real
(216),Thorn in the flesh of the world (234)
2, 4, 23, 31, 38-9, 45, 48, 49, comparing
spider’s web to Tinker Creek (51), 56, 68,
75, sycamore at Tinker Creek (87), 88, 93,
94, 101, 128, 132, 147, flood (149, 154-6),
159, 162, 191, 204, 212, 214, 228
3, 10, 30, 55, 62, 69, 92, 98, 101, 147,
153,228
28, 29, 33-34, 80, 87-88, 93, 129, 205, 241,
242, 271
cedar 243
16, 38, “let us hasten to cast a veil over
these horrors” (64), whisking away veil
after veil (202), fan dancer 203
White man makes woodpile (40), pressed
newspaper “logs”(41), 67, Elijah 69,
woodpile in flood (152), 162