Morning in hunting season, and the woods are blanketed in fog. The hunters sit up in their trees, so still and so hushed that they can hear every drip of water. The poem stays close to what can be seen and heard, and it never tells us outright what anyone feels. Instead, small details carry the mood: a silent crow carrying something in its beak, beads of water on wild grape tendrils, the unmistakable sound of hooves on wet leaves that suddenly stops.
That stop is the tense center of the poem. When the fog thins, we finally see two does, frozen, flicking their white tails up and down like warning signals. The mood is watchful and uneasy. The hunters wait, the deer sense danger, and the crow hints at death without explaining it. The speaker seems to be an observer, quietly noticing it all, and the poem leaves us holding our breath along with the animals.