TWENTY-PERCENT CHANCE OF RAIN

Blue sky with only the faintest wisp of cloud
way over in the west where the fog bank sits,
and the weatherman says we may have rain
but not until the late afternoon if at all.

What do they know anyway about the weather?
All their computers and gauges and meters
don’t tell them for sure what trees know and
flowers and squirrels and don’t forget butterflies.

Where people are concerned, the old ball of earth,
which is the great deceiver, plows through space
reminding us every now and then that all of the
hitchhikers on her back can be evicted at any moment.