Check the Weather Religiously

Prayerfulness, reverence,

and a thrill sprung from minor anticipation.

What will the weather be tomorrow?

Consult the TV, an entire channel devoted

to simplifying what falls from the sky.

Luxuriate in voiceless animation.

The calendar is reduced to playing

cards, numbered squares inscribed with symbols.

Tomorrow, rain: two teardrops

staggered, overlapping. The day after

bears a cloud with petaled edges.

Temperature is shown on a graph, jagged

as a broken zipper. The future

is at stake, but with little risk.

What can I expect of air,

of atmosphere, of sky? The background of blue

on TV is pleasantly vacant,

bare of ambiguity: here

is what you can expect tomorrow

when you stand, face upturned to the heavens.

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Hannah Stephenson is a writer living in Vancouver.  Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in ouroboros review, Mankind Magazine,Spoonful, and The Birmingham Arts Journal. You can visit her daily poetry blog, The Storialist, at www.thestorialist.com.