It’s eleven o’clock
and the power cut has arrived
for its second innings
after the break it granted me for dinner.
I had hung on through the first,
moving candles
and emergency lights
till I found the optimum position
for both
so I could be seen
on a Zoom call.
This second innings is less frenetic,
ambling through like a washed-out cricket game.
It’s so silent now I can hear
the tap dripping in the sink,
the faint voice of a kid talking in a room somewhere in this neighbourhood,
and heavy footsteps down the stairs outside.
In a different time,
the whirring of the fan
would have drawn the curtain
over the leaky tap,
the kid
and Mr. Loudly Plodding Man
in the stairway.
I’m thankful at least the man next door,
the one with the bazooka voice
is not on the phone right now.
No wait,
I wrote that too soon.
I will soon swat the mosquitoes
when I head to bed.
Or stand in the balcony and watch the stars.
But I forget,
it’s been a cloudy evening.
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Grains of thought 