Go ahead — sneer at a coming storm
the way you’d brush off
a slight head cold.

Go ahead — curse the weather people
you claim are likely making blizzards
out of flurries.

As you do,
a woman whose cardboard sign
you’ve driven by every day for months

is tucking herself into thin blankets and tarps
under the plastic roof of a lean-to
behind a long empty auto shop.

She knows how to read
that blank gray sky,
the silence, the dead cold.

She knows what’s coming.
People without homes
know better than you ever could

how cold it will be,
how deep it will be, how likely it is
that some of them are going to die.

Go ahead — complain about
the insignificance of the weather to you.
As you complain, think about

what it takes to make that true, and how much
of what it takes you could spare
for that woman (if you ever see her again)

standing on that corner 
with her sign
that says “God Bless You,”

meeting your eyes
with a look that says she thinks
you deserve that blessing.