The Winter from Which None

POEM | C. Wade Bentley

The Winter from Which None Will EmergeUnscathed

Well, right off, Uncle Cleo will die, but we can’t really blame the winter so much as deep frying. Two disks in Irwin’s spine will bulge when he tries unsuccessfully to push the neighbor’s daughter’s Fiat up the driveway, but he does get asked in for coffee—just coffee—so there’s that. Arwen will hold her face against the kitchen window, soaking in the last of the sun’s warmth at 4:45 p.m., and later, mid-January, carve day lilies into both of her thighs with a lobster fork. Six-year-old Stefan learns the hard news about Santa. A seven-hundred year-old foxtail pine in a Sierra Nevada ice storm splits down the middle. Thirty-seven residents of Butte, Montana,question the existence of God, though twenty-two will recant before Easter. One night in early February, Cyril will see a side of himself so dark and loathsome that he will refuse to allow the coming reproach, the slow indictment of light.