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Wool Resolve

It is our experience,
it is our fate and our doom--
those of us who live with inevitable winter--
to watch the end of summer crumble down to ice.

Autumn is a shuddering and shivering,
a turning through red and yellow to brown.
Autumn is not a season.
It is a witch dressed in pumpkin colored rags.
Autumn is a reminder that the sun is fickle,
and that there is ice beyond.

Autumn came screaming,
ripping at the arrogance of trees
and at thin-layered roofs,
blowing out the last campfires
and bending easy backs
to Minnesota hunches.

We rush back into our houses
as if for the first time cold,
staccato-chattering what we will say
for half a year in wind and snow,
remembering our coats and wondering at gloves.

It is a test, we know,
of whether we are alive
and have a will to thrive.
Let the wicked witch wear white,
and come back around, again!
We'll wear our wool resolve,
and start a winter fire!

The birds will need new seed.

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