He used to frighten me in the nights of childhood,
the wide adult face, enormous, stern, aloft.
I could not imagine such loneliness, such coldness.
But tonight as I drive home over these hilly roads
I see him sinking behind stands of trees
and rising again to show his familiar face.
And when he comes into full view over open fields
he looks like a young man who has fallen in love
with the dark earth,
a pale bachelor, well-groomed and full of melancholy,
his round mouth open
as if he had just broken into song.
- Billy Collins
