During the recent storm that hit the North East, we were one of the hundreds of thousands of people that lost power for several days. Home alone with Arthur and Whispers, our dog and cat (my husband was away on business) I spent a good deal of time reclining out on the front porch in the blessedly cool mountain air, reading my Kindle (I devoured The Hypnotist’s Love Story by Liane Moriarty and the Audible Audio Edition of Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walters) or simply enjoying the reprieve from routine, relaxing… in between fretting over the generators, flipping breakers on and off in the fuse box, prepping the grill for dinner, keeping track of how long the two refrigerators and the one huge freezer could be off before certain foods began to thaw or spoil, etc. The underlying stress made the peaceful moments even sweeter. The third day into the outage, I found myself reaching for my Galaxy Tab. The following poem flowed out of me, the word-netted spirit of my personal outage experience:
Power Outage
An enforced vacation
The gift of a storm
Come out of nowhere
Powerlines torn down
Thousands in the dark
Of their homes and minds
Flung back into the past
And less fortunate presents
My dog doesn’t notice
Our love is his energy
Generators drone the cost
Our selfish comforts exposed
Ancient life cooling new homes
Guilt tells me to suffer more
To sacrifice some pleasures
As if my soul is gangrenous
And I must cut off part of myself
But I feel too healthy to give up
I love the world I live in
Flawed infrastructures and all
The magical power of progress
The joy of learning and sharing
In defiance of space and gravity
I love civilization’s creativity
Not its abusive relationships
I see the earth as everything
through us, its suffering
our need to grow