Minnesota is Weather

This year autumn is burning
into the edge of winter.
October so warm
natives keeep short pants
handy in the closet.
Whole days like Easter:
golden mornings,
gala afternoons,
the prairie dried into a panorama
of its summer color
and moons -
moons that stop your heart.

Cedar waxwings and robins
migrating together
but there are fewer of them
gorging on the tiny crab apples
and the delicate monarchs
on their odyssey to Mexico,
are smaller.
Is this the year of warnings:
hurricanes,
earthquakes,
pandemic influenza?

Here in our northern state -
warmth, color, melting breezes?
We're not accustomed to nature pampering us.
Hopeful we scan the weather screen:
snow, ice, thermometers below zero,
these are comforting seasonal familiars.
Is summer pushing into winter our catastrophe?