Reasons to be Cheerful

[mific]

a belated More Joy Day thing - belated for reasons as in the poem below, that I wrote yesterday.

Drifting Cheerfully in the Black

There's a gale outside,
Wind howling, trees lashing.
The power went off an hour ago.

My cat Possum's outside; he's weird that way.
Likes rain, likes getting the wind up his bottom.
Mum used to say that.

I'm inside, listening to rain drum on the corrugated iron,
Smug and snug, like a bug in a rug.
She used to say that, too.

I light candles, the camping gas lamp and the burner;
Living out here you learn to plan for outages.
I make tea, grab a snack.

Possum pounds in, bedraggled and excited.
I towel his wet fur - he likes that.
If I were a cat I'd lick him dry, but this'll do.

I sit in my favourite chair, feet up on a footstool.
The phone's dead but my pad's filled with ebooks and fanfic.
By chance it was fully charged when we lost power.

Lost power: I feel like a spaceship in the black.
Engineering, report! The sublights are down but we're working on it, Cap'n!
In a spaceship there's no rain; my engineers aren't so lucky.

Outside, the storm thrashes and I'm browsing through titles.
Possum smells of damp cat, warm and purring in my lap.
I'll read till the pad dies, then we'll head off to bed.

I touch a story.
***