Power Failure

ALL the relations sleep.
Forced to early beds by lack of light
Mother, sister, husband, children
have left me
cat-eyed
to delight in my own power.

The storm that downed the wires is over,
steady rain’s moved into the back yard.

I sit on the top of the steps,
bare feet getting rained on,
watching the lightning bug
high in the pin oak
bright as the end of my cigarette.
Below me a gardenia glows
unconnected to its charcoal foliage.

A grey shape shifts among these
blacks and lights.
Another cat does not surprise me.

Leaning against the screen door
I’m vanishing with a Cheshire smile.
For not one of them—
Mother, sister, husband, children—
will travel the black house sightless,
come up behind me,
see what I am up to

until the power comes back on.