The night my father died the moon shone on the snow.
I drove in from the west; mother was at the door.
All the light in the room extended like a shadow. 
Truant from knowing, I stood where the great dark fell.

There was a time before, something we used to tell—
how we parked the car in a storm and walked into a field 
to know how it was to be cut off, out in the dark alone.
My father and I stood together while the storm went by.

A windmill was there in the field giving its little cry, 
while we stood calm in ourselves, knowing we could go home.
But I stood on the skull of the world the night he died,  and knew 
that I leased a place to live with my white breath.

Truant no more, I stepped forward and learned his death.