Like It.

Sixty-two and not yet midnight. A violent, violent storm out puppet-showward, but as I was there and not here, all I can say for here is that trash cans were on their sides and plants knocked down. Leaves in the streets if not limbs. Mid-eighties by mid-afternoon, and now there's the damn-for-sure certainty of long sleeves and a hat on the morning dogwalk. I always forget how sharply the season changes. We'll snap back warm again, surely, but what's out there now smacks of tea, of layers, of chili, of the good seasonal beer, of actual October right here on the eve of October. Been so long since we had the month's weather we were owed that I'm not sure what to make of all this. But for the godforsaken hum humming on, we'd be in paradise.

I know how the dog will be come morning, remember so well turning the corner off the gravel alley over near Carr Street ten years ago, turning her into the wind and knowing certainly of the wildness in her, that coyote gait coming full to the surface, her head high and sniffing hard into what's coming, that prance, that sureness that this is her season. Is that too much? That's too much. Put another way: I can feel now the tug of the fall vacation, the cabin, the tree farm, the state park, the dog, the wood stove. If the dog's at all like me she feels it all year long like I do, gets those genes reset every September or October. These are the first days of fall, says Stephen Dobyns. Scroll down, interneters, and hear the poem for yourself. Or don't. Go outside, hum or no, stand on the front porch, sniff what you haven't sniffed since June set in, or May. Here, then, yes and please and thank you, is a cold front. Here is a change in the weather.