A sublunary road

I see the moon.
A million stars are out tonight...

Once you're down the steep hill on the truck route, you wind through a wooded canyon along a series of curves. The trees and cliffs all look alike in the dark, and the curves keep coming, and when there's no traffic, you enter a kind of time warp. The moon shines steadily through the windshield—the moon, the inconstant moon, that steadily circles above the sublunary earth and its inconstancy. The road keeps curving and the pines keep passing, and you cannot tell how far you've come and how long it's taken at all, if at all, and it seems quite possible that time has, maybe, oh bright hope, curved itself, and you will continue along this road for only a moment and forever.

Lost, you could be, you realize with a shiver. But it's the shiver that is preferable to any warmth, and maybe this time the road will not be bent but will lead to the Undying Lands, where the mirror and the lamp are one. The reality is hidden, but there's the moon, right there, just over the mountains, the promise and the pledge, and if only the road were straightened...

But out my left window I catch a bright glimpse of ragged cliff and shadow, spot-lighted as for a drama, and then I pass into an open space. I approach the traffic signal on State Road Four.