Traveling Through The Dark

1. The speaker's dilemma is whether or not to push the doe over the canyon into the river below. He is a moral person. Before he gets out of the car he weighs the pros and cons, but his conscience tells him the right thing to do. He does make the right decision. He moved the dear from the middle of the road so no one else would have an accident. "I dragged her off; she was large in the belly." (Line 8) He also made the right by not trying to save the baby. Without guidance from its mother, the fawn would never have survived the harsh conditions of the wild; it probably would have been hit bay a car as well or eaten by a coyote. He refers to his hesitation as 'my only swerving' because he deviates from his initial plan. He sets out to just remove the dear from the road and deposit her in the canyon. He "swerves" when he realizes she is pregnant and stops to think about his actions. "...that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead." (Line 4) The use of swerve in this line refers to the fact that if the speaker were to veer away from the doe and leave her on the road, it may create more accidents because people may not see the dear and would swerve away from her which would result in a crashed vehicle. This connects with the use of the swerve in line 17 in ways such as in line 4 he states that "to swerve might make more dead", meaning that leaving the dear in the road would cause more accidents. In line 17 he says "I thought hard for us all- my only swerving-" he hesitates to think if his actions were right, had he decided that they weren't and left her there it would have caused her more accidents. They connect because his moral dilemma is the same in both lines: whether or not to leave the dear in the middle of the road.
2. "Traveling though the dark..." (Line 1) Stafford uses this line to evoke the sense of sight. By saying that the speaker is traveling through the dark obviously mean that it is night time, but the word dark's connotation may mean that it is very late, perhaps between 10 and 5 in the morning. "...around our group I could hear the wilderness listen" (Line 20) It is completely silent, not even a cricket chirping. The world is watching to see what the speaker will decide to do. "I thought hard for us.." (Line 21) The speaker could be with a group of people, most likely returning home from some sort of social event. It may also just mean that the speaker is traveling home and alone and 'us' refers to himself and the dear. 
3. In the first stanza the word road and dead are both only one syllable. In stanza two, there is consonance between the words killing and belly, repetition of the double 'l'. In the forth stanza engine and listen both end in the same sound.