I used to think that thunder was
The sound of the Hammer, Thor,
He’d beat it up on the clouds above
Each time he was waging war,
He’d quell his foes with a lightning strike
Or drown them all in his rain,
Whenever he came along at night
His purpose was always pain.

For we lived down in the valley where
The tendency was to flood,
Whenever the river was swollen with
A squirt of his enemy’s blood,
We’d have to climb up to higher ground
And sit there, soaked to the skin,
With lightning flashing around our heads
We’d need to pay for our sins.

‘Pay for our sins,’ my father said
In a voice that rumbled and roared,
He’d pull a hood up over his head
And speak to the god called Thor,
Then Thor replied with a mighty blast
To drown out my father’s cries,
As if he answered him there at last,
‘All that you speak are lies!’

While mother sat in a silent weep
As often she’d done before,
‘Why did you have to build our house
Way down on the valley floor?
We would have been safer, further up
And still walk down to the stream,
To carry a bucket of water up,
But all that you do is dream!’

That was his sin, my mother said,
He didn’t know black from white,
He never looked far enough ahead
He didn’t know wrong from right,
Dreaming up schemes that failed, it seems
Like a prophet, living in dread,
That one black night at the river’s height
We’d all be drowned in our bed.

‘Not that his bed means much to him,’
My mother would often moan,
‘Not since that gypsy girl, that Kym
Stayed in the valley alone,
He spends his time in her caravan
Drinking her gypsy tea,
And letting her hold and read his hand,
He never did that with me!’

And so it was on a cold, black night
He’d gone to her caravan,
‘Just to check that she’ll be all right,’
He said, just playing the man,
The thunder crashed on the mountain top
While we prayed, and gave up thanks,
To the mighty Thor beating at our door
That the river not break its banks.

Lightning flashed though the vale of trees
Where she’d parked her gypsy van,
And then my mother was on her knees
As we heard a mighty bang,
For lightning struck at the heart of sin
And it set the van ablaze,
While both the sinners were trapped within
And paid for their sinful ways.

We buried him on the valley floor
For my mother said, ‘It’s right.
He doesn’t deserve a headstone
Nor a grave that’s watertight.’
Whenever the god of thunder calls
And the river overflows,
I think of my father down below
And I wonder if he knows.

David Lewis Paget