Circle of Breath

Painting by Gary R. Lucy



Circle of Breath


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
the 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.


William Stafford

Posted over on William Stafford Archives