Roe-Deer
Ted Hughes
In the dawn's early light, in the the biggest snow of the year
Two blue-dark deer stood in the road, alerted.
They had happened into my dimension
The moment I was arriving just there.
They planted their two or three years of secret deerhood
Clear on my snow-screen vision of the abnormal
And hesitated in the all-way disintegration
And stared at me. And so for some lasting seconds
I could think the deer were waiting for me
To remember the password and sign
That the curtain had blown aside for a moment
And there where the trees were no longer trees, nor the road a road
The deer had come for me.
Then they ducked thru the hedge, and upright they rode their legs
Away downhill over snow-lonely field
Towards tree dark--finally
Seeming to eddy and glide and fly away up
Into the boil of big flakes.
The snow took them and soon their nearby hoofprints as well
Revising its dawn inspiration
Back to the ordinary.
