THE MAN IN THE MOON
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 winter 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
My room was alight with the soft glow of the quarter moon, what a beautiful sight it was suspended there above the treetops. And I felt like there for a moment time stood still, and I was one with all of the other people throughout time who looked up at that shimmering crescent.
