The electricity was off when I woke up. Oh, my goodness! What a difference. Everything was still and dark. No friendly lights blinking on this or that appliance. No internet. No coffee!! So, I thought I’d just run over to McDonald’s for a cup of their savory brew. Running might have worked, but my garage door didn’t. So, I phoned Matt. Yes, they had electricity. Whew! I could get a cup of coffee and all would be well. But, wait! What was that flicker? A spark of hope? Yes! The electricity is back on!
Isn’t it funny that our lives are so dependent upon that one thing? How crippled we would be without it. If we were geared, our daily lives attuned to not having electricity to run things, we would be adapted to another lifestyle. We were, a hundred or more years ago. No electricity would have been no problem. But today, we are coddled and dependent. And, I’m thankful for it.
Getting back to something the critique group and I talked about Wednesday–a story poem I wrote years ago called the Canebreak ABC’s. Startlingly, no one knew what a canebreak was. Well, in the South, along the river banks, you are apt to see tall, straight, green plants growing closely together, sort of a grove of them. These are river cane. People used to make cane fishing poles of them. So, I imagined many wild animals and insects which might call this canebreak home and came up with a children’s ABC book.
Red Ants, black ants, marching all together through a canebrake by the river in the lovely summer weather.
Many colored Butterflies drift or dream or flit among tall stalks of cane, just for the fun of it.
A Caterpillar wriggles and a Cricket creaks a song, surrounded by the river cane, thick and green and long.
Dragonflies a-dazzle with sunshine on their wings dart and hover, dip and dance with joy that summer brings.
And, so on, all the way through Z. But, that’s neither here nor there. I’m going to need a lot of cups of Folgers this morning to overcome the trauma of waking up to no electricity and seeing no way of obtaining coffee. Not a good way to greet the day!
Manos Mysteries
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