Big Winter

Big Winter


Kids came from the whole neighborhood
to sled the big hill behind our house, usually

reserved for dove hunting, the occasional tumble,

now covered in a thick white.
We’d cajole any adult sober
enough to drive to Hunt’s Tire Service

for a tractor tire inner-tube because the old man

wouldn’t sell them to kids—he knew
what we’d do as soon as we got home.

The boys pushed the girls before they were ready,

bullied and mocked the younger kids,
vying for the record for longest slide.
We’d run inside the house for hot chocolate,

take turns in front of the butane heater
playing Atari 2600

while our fingers thawed,
then race back to the hill,
every year, the same group of us,
perfecting our techniques,

inching farther and farther down the hill,
into the valley.

Once, Keith Davis, an older boy all the girls
went red around, took a turn. We taunted him,
tried to scare him with stories of sticks

popping the tube, kids flipping and sliding
down on their faces;

don’t move, just lay down and let gravity
do its thing. He listened,
serious and nodding, then he jumped on
and slide down, across the valley

below to the frozen lake, and across most of that.
A wave

of neighborhood girls plunged down to help him
carry the inner-tube back up smiling and waving
while the boys grumbled.



C.L. Bledsoe

Posted over on The Orange Room Review