the world a letter

J

Then the rain on its way from the south
and pushed east over us by a low
must be almost here, for my thirst
is of a dying man’s, and sleep
has forgotten me. That is weather too,
for cannot a man swigging gallons yet parched
be called a weather? On account
of sleep gone the way of the mild
September we had known, he is tenuous
like a cloud pulled with each attention
from the medium otherwise known
as its world apart, and high
like that one too. Tonight, dreaming
of sleep, shifting into whatever
he will hazily wake to, nothing is memorable
for it is in the syntax that weather shifts.
In New Jersey it is Florida
again, in Florida the central Atlantic
prophesies land loudly, and in his body
is a relentless/revelatory shifting, thirsty
to overtake us all.