The night was a night of thunder,
Of flashes of lightning too,
Her eyes had stared out in wonder
At what it was going to do.
She stood by the attic window
To stare outside in a trance,
While out in the breeze, the wind in the trees
Would flutter, and leap, and dance.

The bolts had zig-zagged like dragons
That fought in the eastern sky,
They carried their battle wagons
Of fireworks, sparked on high.
But now and then with a force like zen
They’d crash to earth on the ground,
And blight the night with a fierce light
And a most tumultuous sound.

It rattled the attic windows,
The shutters blew out like a sail,
The rain pit-pattered each window pane
And suddenly turned to hail.
The wind was humming and crooning
As it flitted up in the eaves,
The parting clouds let the moon in,
Tracing a path through the trees.

And she remembered the tales she’d heard
Of the thunder god named Thor,
Who beat with his mighty hammer
Downstairs on the outside door.
The wind was warbling, ‘Let me in,’
In a tone that meant to entice,
But Barbara shivered alone in her skin,
She wouldn’t be caught out twice.

For once she’d opened the outside door
In a storm when she was young,
And stood on the outside paving stones
When the lightning danced on her tongue.
And dragons crackled across her brain
While lightning flashed from her eyes,
‘Just come outside, there will be no pain,’
The wind was telling her lies.

She stood so close to the window pane
She wasn’t prepared for the flash,
A blinding light almost took her sight,
Her image was burnt on the glass.
And now if you stand in the garden there
Look up to the attic room,
And Barbara still stares down at you
Though she’s been long in her tomb.

She’d turned away from the window pane
And staggered down by the stair,
She was almost blind but she had to find
Just who was calling her there.
The outside door swung open and wide
She stepped on the paving stones,
And Thor delivered a hammer blow
That shattered Barbara’s bones.

David Lewis Paget