Are you just driving, as Americans do?
Are you looking for oil?
Are you looking for you?
Night, asphalt, speed--and a dashboard
lit up like a little city: this is what you love.
Your driven lights seize a tawny-gray doe.
This deer in the headlights is an angel come down
to tell you to pay attention. She stands
at the end of your car's long braking scream.
She allows you not to kill her,
steps deftly, hard hooves
on pavement, reaches soil and stone, springs
back into grace. You curse, not knowing what
you curse. You take a breath, cut the engine,
not the lights. Night's landscape crashes
around you. The doe is there
moving into the rest of her life
as you move into the rest of yours, which begins
here, dark highway, where you stopped, now start
again, slowly, attentive to the edges of your way.
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