The Cows At Night by Hayden Carruth

The moon was like a full cup tonight, too heavy, and sank in the mist soon after dark, leaving for light

faint stars and the silver leaves of milkweed beside the road, gleaming before my car.

Yet I like driving at night in summer and in Vermont: the brown road through the mist

of mountain-dark, among farms so quiet, and the roadside willows opening out where I saw

the cows. Always a shock to remember them there, those great breathings close in the dark.

I stopped, and took my flashlight to the pasture fence. They turned to me where they lay, sad

and beautiful faces in the dark, and I counted them–forty near and far in the pasture,

turning to me, sad and beautiful like girls very long ago who were innocent, and sad

because they were innocent, and beautiful because they were sad. I switched off my light.

But I did not want to go, not yet, nor knew what to do if I should stay, for how

in that great darkness could I explain anything, anything at all. I stood by the fence. And then

very gently it began to rain.