In the Dark

We leave Friday evening after dinner
my father drives, my mother chats and sighs
and turns around to shush at Sue and me
fighting our usual war for backseat acreage.

It’s night before we slow and take the turn
on the narrow dirt road and into starless,
uninhabited darkness.  At a pull-off
he turns the headlights off for just a while
so we can see real dark, the Godless Nothing.
I shut my eyes and open them:
it’s darker outside me than in, and then
we're on the road again,

Steering around blind turns our headlights see
stroboscopic tree-trunks. A falling barn.
The mirrored flash from someone's pane of glass.
On uphills staring dutifully at nothing.
Then,

a rustling in the woods, my mother shrieks,
my father brakes and right in front of us 
a white-tailed deer vaults across our lights
over the road, a grande jetee, crashing
through undergrowth and gone. Mother shouts
Look!

craning out the window Oh my god
falsetto did you, did you see? fixated
breathing  fast awhile aha and Oh
she whips around to stare at us in back
bulbous-eyed abruptly gravely wordlessly
back to watch the  forest where it went
delighted not herself for once and loath
to let it go. She watches him, his profile, 
with a sly defiant smile. He nods to her
kindly, mildly briefly, takes breath
and shifts back in gear with grinding teeth.