The half-light before sunrise flattens the field,

doesn’t leave shadows yet, draws the road

with graphite stillness, the flat mesquites

that spike against the toneless sky, fences

as monochromatic as the memory of pain.

Watching for mule deer is the main thing,

because they are as gray as the hill

at times like these, will leap in front of you

with wild desperation, some mislaid instinct,

their eyes a flash in the headlights

before the quick blur of sharp hooves and 

splintering bones as thin as a bird’s. 

The dented front will tell it, the stiff short hairs

hanging off the curve of the bumper.

The suffering thing you don’t know what to do with.

The way you’ll walk back, hoping no one will know it was you.

I’ve heard that, if you know you’re going to hit one,

you should accelerate right before you do, 

so that the car will hunker like a cat

and glance it up across the hood, increasing your chance

of survival, if not the deer’s.

It must be this light– it’s the light that does it to us.

Bright enough to show the form of the world

without giving any definition to it. 

The way the early morning makes no promises,

might as well tell that nothing at all is there:

not the car’s headlights fading into the gray light,

or the road that looks like it closes behind you.

Not the invisible city that soon the sun will rise over.

Not the brokenness you leave behind 

that carries your name.