skipping church to pray for rain

as I had hoped
last night,
three AM,
drunk,
for a heavy
and soaking rain,
it did come
and I heard it at approximately
four AM,
not nearly as drunk,
too tired to be drunk
though the feelings may
have intertwined to create
the stupor in which I had
earlier in the witching hour
hoped for rain.
in my prayer I was terse.
(I call it prayer due to
the fact that weather
is as close to a god as I have.
it determines my mood and
my action as if the holy one
himself had bestowed in
precipitation the power
to rule me and pull me around
by sweat-tinged collar
and throw me into wet or cold
or blanket-like heat that
is so hot it becomes imperceptible
to the skin and at which point one can only
experience the meteorology of hell
through pursed lips and
the knowing of the history
of july.)
the wish for rain then was
less abstract idealism
(idealism in rain
is the sound it makes
on pavement
and the smell the pavement
emits)
and more a conjuring of the only god I know
to deliver me the parallel of
how I was feeling.
then today
I awoke not to four AM rain
but ten AM gray,
like the smoke of burned out tires
from a race which had just begun
or just ended
though since you were not there to see
a luscious girl swipe the air with her
handkerchief
you are not sure which it is
so you are left in limbo
like me, this
morning,
unsure of whether the rain had just stopped
or was about to begin again
or whether it would be another two weeks
before it was acceptable
for me to lay in bed all day
in long-johns that,
at this point,
are out of season.