Less abandoned

When we could not watch

Television or YouTube or use

Mobiles during the storm

We came to the gate to watch

The rainwater flowing in the street

We warned passersby off the deep end

As the surpluses from the reservoirs

Came surging all the way here, we worried

For a while but when the level eased out

We knew our houses would not be violated;

Grown-up girls remembered their childhood

Made paper boats and sailed them out front

In the streams going past the apartments

Fulfilled their desires to cast stones in the water

See them leap away from them like frogs

The pre-electricity darkness filled with chatter

As neighbours who had hardly exchanged a word

Came downstairs to collect and share news

There were flashes of humanity in their talk

Of native towns they found changing every year

Fading from memory, distance growing with time

One revealed a family secret she would not have

In more normal times, in more normal light

When we went back to our candle-lit homes, we felt less abandoned.