Losing Creature Comforts
A poet learns a lesson of gratitude during a storm
Losing Creature Comforts
It’s May, and our power’s out.
The storm was ferocious, short-lived and precise,
knocking out power lines and felling giant oaks
that had lived for generations in a hamlet
down the road not far from here.
But our trees were safe — this time.
They weren’t so fortunate last time a storm came through
when lightning struck our huge Maples out front
splitting them in two and flattening saplings
on their way to the electrified earth.
Which reminds me — we still need to call the arborist.
Nice chap, friendly sort, married with two kids and lives nearby.
But today we have no power, so we have no phone, no internet,
and we don’t have running water
because we rely on electricity for all those things.
But we have a river to fetch buckets of water to flush the toilet,
and our daughter invited us to her place
to fill jugs for drinking water
and charge the devices that we find so…
