Thematic Elements

Deer matter, I think. This poem, even with its perfect images (they just formed pristinely in my mind), depresses me because it shows that other people do not think so much of our furry friends.

The sound the car makes, as it tries to avoid hitting the deer.

As embarrassing as this is, this is the beginning of the first Twilight movie (you know, the really bad one). When I thought "things I've seen with dead deer in them", a visual of this just popped into my head. Looking back, maybe the beginning of Bambi would have been better for the subject matter (and my dignity), but as someone with rather a lack of filter, I tend to run with the first thing that pops into my head. Here it is, without roads, men in cars, or deep ravines. The beginning of Twilight - in relation to Traveling Through the Dark.

Traveling through the dark I found a deer dead on the edge of the Wilson River road. It is usually best to roll them into the canyon: that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead. By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing; she had stiffened already, almost cold. I dragged her off; she was large in the belly. My fingers touching her side brought me the reason-- her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting, alive, still, never to be born. Beside that mountain road I hesitated. 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. I thought hard for us all--my only swerving--, then pushed her over the edge into the river. 

embroidered with fire."

I've read this poem several times, but it wasn't until the last perusal that I realized there's something about this girl - the ghost in the poem, and her association with a carcass of a forest - reminded me in one of the very last scenes in all seven of the Harry Potter books. When Harry realizes that Dumbledore has intended him to die all along, to spell the ultimate doom of Voldemort, he travels alone into the Forbidden Forest to face his death. It was a heartbreaking scene and, honestly, something about his situation there seems like the girl's situation in the poem - alone, determined to continue that way, intent on something (even if it is unclear).  

Each night she waits by the road in a thin white dress embroidered with fire. It has been twenty years since her house surged and burst in the dark trees.        Still nobody goes there. The heat charred the branches of the apple trees, but nothing can kill that wood.  She will climb into your car                            but not say where she is going  and you shouldn’t ask. Nor should you try to comb the blackened nest of       hair or press the agates of tears back into her eyes.                                       First the orchard bowed low and complained of the unpicked fruit, then the branches cracked apart and fell. The windfalls sweetened to wine beneath the ruined arms and snow.                         Each spring now, in the grass, buds form on the       tattered wood. The child, the child, why is she so persistent in her need? Is it so terrible to be alone when the cold white blossoms come to life and burn?                                  

Geese honking, early in the morning.

However, I suppose that, in a slow, small town (only a mile wide!) where everything and everyone is always the same, you'd cling to anything just to break the monotony.

However, I suppose they were just working with what they had. Geese just seem a little too ordinary to be extraordinary to me.

Aliceville, North Carolina

This song was the first thing I thought of while reading this poem. I wasn't able to find the footage that accompanied it in the movie, but the song is descriptive enough, I think, of the blitzkreigs that occured over London during World War II.

The American Army, World War II

To me, this seems almost inhumane, treating soldiers as though they were dispensible material. However, I also recognize that, in the heat of war, the truth of the matter is that such a feeling is necessary.

It was not dying: everybody died. It was not dying: we had died before In the routine crashes-- and our fields Called up the papers, wrote home to our folks, And the rates rose, all because of us. We died on the wrong page of the almanac, Scattered on mountains fifty miles away; Diving on haystacks, fighting with a friend, We blazed up on the lines we never saw. We died like aunts or pets or foreigners. (When we left high school nothing else had died For us to figure we had died like.) In our new planes, with our new crews, we bombed The ranges by the desert or the shore, Fired at towed targets, waited for our scores-- And turned into replacements and woke up One morning, over England, operational. It wasn't different: but if we died It was not an accident but a mistake (But an easy one for anyone to make.) We read our mail and counted up our missions-- In bombers named for girls, we burned The cities we had learned about in school-- Till our lives wore out; our bodies lay among The people we had killed and never seen. When we lasted long enough they gave us medals; When we died they said, 'Our casualties were low.' They said, 'Here are the maps'; we burned the cities. It was not dying --no, not ever dying; But the night I died I dreamed that I was dead, And the cities said to me: 'Why are you dying? We are satisfied, if you are; but why did I die?'