It rained the day she died. <br />Somber, stygian clouds crept across Beech Mountain <br />In the night, suffusing the swales between somnolent hills, <br />Drenching the ancient peaks, and we awoke to sodden skies. <br />Keen, jagged bolts of lightning rent the murky air asunder. <br />Thunder spoke in strident stentorian tones, undulating, <br />Reverberating like petulant, vengeful voices of wrathful gods, <br />Palpable and puissant. <br /> <br />Three days we had been waiting. <br />She lingered, a curiously empty vessel, comatose, crushed, despoiled, <br />Life cruelly curtailed, future precipitously purloined. <br />At last sorrow flowed in mounting rivulets through desolate streets. <br /> <br />And Grandfather Mountain, massif antediluvian, stark, silent sentinel, <br />Lay as he has lain three-hundred million years, <br />His craggy, primordial profile upturned to the weeping heavens. <br />The sun, we knew, would shine again, <br />Though never quite so bright.<br /><br />William B. Watterson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/for-alesia/
