Stanza 3 Summary

Lines 13-16

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

• The car is still running. The speaker continues to hesitate, stopped by the knowledge that the dead deer holds a living fawn.
• The speaker stands with the dead deer and the living fawn in the wilderness. The wilderness, the natural world, seems to be aware of their small "group" along the side of the road.
• The car is subtly personified. It "aim[s] ahead its […] lights." It "purr[s]."
• The car functions as a metaphor for the living, here. The lowered lights are like sad eyes, aware of the death behind but looking ahead down the road of life, away from death.
• The "steady engine" running "under the hood" brings to mind the steady, beating heart of the living.
• The car's "warm exhaust," like breath in the night air, adds to the personification of the car, the sense that it is living.
• We consider the fawn's still-beating heart inside the dead doe's womb. We see life and death literally linked (the living fawn still attached to the dead doe). It's also figuratively linked, too, through the closeness of the dead deer to the car (the living) and through the car being surrounded by darkness (which can symbolize the unknown and/or death).
• The word "glare" kind of stands out. Exhaust doesn't really "glare," does it?
• And yet, the speaker stands, "in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red." Literally, the speaker is standing behind the car, washed in the red glow of the tail-lights. But, to the speaker, the exhaust "glares"—kind of like the sun, it's impossible to ignore.
• The speaker is "turning red." Turning red is usually associated with anger or embarrassment (like the time Shmoop knocked over the punch-table at the Christmas party).
• Metaphorically, it seems like the breath from the car, the "glaring" evidence of life there in the face of death, makes the speaker somehow ashamed or embarrassed.
• The speaker can "hear the wilderness listen." The natural world is aware of the speaker and deer and the unborn fawn.
• It almost feels like the wilderness is watching to see what the speaker will do. Even though no one else is there, the speaker has the sense that something is aware of, perhaps even judging, his actions. Creepy times, gang.

Lines 17-18

I thought hard for us all—my only swerving—,
then pushed her over the edge into the river.

• The speaker thinks about himself and the doe and the fawn. It is his only hesitation ("swerving"). Then, he finishes the task he started in stanza 2 and pushes the dead deer and the still living fawn over the edge and into the river.
• When the speaker says he "thought hard for us all," he is talking about their "group," the speaker, the doe, and the fawn, but we can also read "us all" also as humanity, or even all living things. The speaker thinks hard about life and death, about mortality.
• The word "swerving" echoes the "swerve" in stanza 1 ("to swerve might make more dead"), emphasizing the importance of staying on the road, on the right course. Our speaker really wants us to stay on that road.
• The cars need to stay on the road and the speaker needs to stay on the right course of action, doing what he must with the doe and the fawn.
• In the end, we are left to consider the cruelty and fragility of life and our responsibility to take care of the living as best we can, even when that means making difficult decisions.
• The poem ends with the deer being pushed "over the edge into the river." The poem's final word is "river." A river is kind of like a road, right? It's different, wetter, but it's still a path—a way to get from one place to another.
• The river also provides the possibility of another journey that the dead deer may be embarking on. Is the poem hinting at the idea of an afterlife—another journey that awaits us all after death? That would certainly be a good question to take up with your poetry pals, don't you think?