My father, for example, <br />who was young once <br />and blue-eyed, <br />returns <br />on the darkest of nights <br />to the porch and knocks <br />wildly at the door, <br />and if I answer <br />I must be prepared <br />for his waxy face, <br />for his lower lip <br />swollen with bitterness. <br />And so, for a long time, <br />I did not answer, <br />but slept fitfully <br />between his hours of rapping. <br />But finally there came the night <br />when I rose out of my sheets <br />and stumbled down the hall. <br />The door fell open <br /> <br />and I knew I was saved <br />and could bear him, <br />pathetic and hollow, <br />with even the least of his dreams <br />frozen inside him, <br />and the meanness gone. <br />And I greeted him and asked him <br />into the house, <br />and lit the lamp, <br />and looked into his blank eyes <br />in which at last <br />I saw what a child must love, <br />I saw what love might have done <br />had we loved in time.<br /><br />Mary Oliver<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-visitor/
