Traveling Through the Dark Stafford furtively conceals the profound meaning of his poem behind a story of the narrator, who stops alongside the road to care for a deer. The genius behind poem is better understood when the superficial meaning is expressed deeply. Driving down a narrow mountain road, “traveling through the dark,” the narrator of the poem encounters a deer. The deer is actually “dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.” The …showed first 75 words of 743 total…

…showed last 75 words of 743 total…on our way with the difficulties behind us. William Stafford does an excellent job of holding to his objective in this poem. His style of story telling kept his main theme at focus. His story clarifies the confused nature of life. We must learn to deal with tragedies such as death, since they are unavoidable. These events do have an everlasting effect on us, but they should not lead us away from our natural course.