A Mocking Bird Calls

A late afternoon thunderstorm lowered over Cypress with heavy rains, continuous cracklings of lightning. We lost power for three hours by nightfall, leaving me restless, occasionally reading by flashlight or smart-phone glow—

Brendan slept soundly without his usual white noise from the fan, but I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, listening to the thick summer night motioning outside—

•241 / afterwards— morning steam rises off wooden planks of the backyard fence—somewhere a mocking bird calls out his morning prayers, three times—•