Southbound

do you remember those nights
of a college's roommates coughing?
kept you awake but you knew,
you focused on,
it wouldn't always be like this.

say i were to plot on a map
when that miserable night occurred,
i'd place it up in new england
and show you how the equator equals
like age 80 or something
and by now you'd be on your way south
and you'd be someplace certainly warm.

my cold woke me this AM,
and this cold had me talking funny
as colds often do,
so here i am typing and coughing
listening to that poetry teacher's voice
inside this congested head
and she complains how this is prose
not poetry, how's there's no imagery
of a sparrow fluttering through the fall,
no words of the larger girth,
nothing of worth in the articulate currency.
cough, cough.

maybe i should listen, 
but let these words do their best:
it's nice to think back
to that night of the roommate's coughing
and remember i was right.
i'm somewhere near texas.