NIÑONELLE By William Snyder

NIÑONELLE
                                                               Fargo, ND, 2015
 
Sixty degrees in mid-October—this year’s so-mild Fall,
arranged, they say, by El Niño. And soon, winter, the warmest
maybe, ever recorded. The Christ Child, it’s called
 
by fisherfolk in Peru and Ecuador, warm water days when all
will beach their boats at Christmas-time to repair worn nets.
It’s sixty degrees today, October 21st , and it’s altered
 
the usual—we go about in flimsy jackets, shorts even, small
children bumped along in strollers, parents almost sweating
to the warmth degree. El Niño, the Christ Child, a waltz
 
of current and wind off Chili and Peru, the pattern-stall
that could nudge Dakota’s winter to a wonderful ever-best.
Low sixties outdoors in October—but hopefully, not a false
 
promise of weathery grace—the backyard crab apples
have shed their berries and leaves after all—forgetting
how the Christ Child's swift winds above the Pacific
 
can do miracles in North Dakota—or promises of miracles—
a crazy hope that winter ahead might be just a gentle guest.
Sixty degrees—a heat wave here in October. So we call
to the Christ Child: Oh Niño, please, please don’t falter.

William Snyder has published poems in Cardinal Sins, Atlanta Review, Poet Lore, and Southern Humanities Review among others. He was the co-winner of the 2001 Grolier Poetry Prize; winner of the 2002 Kinloch Rivers Chapbook competition; The CONSEQUENCE Prize in Poetry, 2013; the 2015 Claire Keyes Poetry Prize; Tulip Tree Publishing Stories That Need To Be Told 2019 Merit Prize for Humor; and Encircle Publications 2019 Chapbook Contest. He teaches writing and literature at Concordia College, Moorhead, MN.