NIGHT VISION

No doe-eyed road kill tonight, no thanks
to any lightning-fast reflexes on my part.

It is literally the doe’s eyes, two marble-sized
Chernobyl reactors irradiating out

from the sea of darkness on the suddenly-there
road shoulder, the funnels of my low-beams

drinking more absence from the black,
her russet hide standing on alert, gunmetal

gray muzzle aimed my way, that saves us
from a twisted marriage of bone and steel.

Her gaze follows me into the outlier neighborhood
of browned grass and geese-huddled ponds where I watch

Sunday night blood sport with my kin, who will cross into
her neck of the woods come next month, Winchesters

cradled in camouflage arms, Bushnell 10X42s
hanging from necks, eager-eyed for her and her kin.

I think to betray my own kind, warn her on the way back,
but the fire has gone out of the night, the rods of my eyes only human.

Robert L. Dean, Jr. is the author of Pulp (Finishing Line Press 2022); The Aerialist Will not be Performing: ekphrastic poems and short fictions to the art of Steven Schroeder (Turning Plow Press, 2020); and At the Lake with Heisenberg(Spartan Press, 2018). A multiple Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, his work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Sheila-Na-Gig online, I-70 Review, Suisan Valley Review, Flint Hills Review, MockingHeart Review, and many other literary journals. Dean has been a professional musician and worked at The Dallas Morning News. He lives in Augusta, Kansas.