I have decided to winter
Blair Benjamin
Titus 3:12
I have leaned
away from my sun
by almost imperceptible
degrees and it casts a gnawing
chill. I am more the leaf-shed
oak than the evergreen.
I am the ache and fever
of flu—my color drained.
I still make my daily
rounds: my dawn greetings
precede the feebled light;
by night, I whirl stubbornly
out and face a boundless
universe. But always predictable,
I inch back from the empty like
trees to the unblocked beam.
I go absent yet I will return.
Blair Benjamin’s previous work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Threepenny Review, Bluestem Magazine, Lumina, Spillway, Sugar House Review, and Typehouse, among others. He is the Founder and Director of the Studios at MASS MoCA, a residency for artists and writers in North Adams, Massachusetts.