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Poem: Lightning on the Lookout

Now a thunder storm will command respect Wherever the lightning flashes; But the wickedest place in a storm I know Is on top of a mountain in Idaho, Where Jupiter Pluvius lets her go, And Thor with his thunder crashes.

You sit in a shack with a roof of tin And a stovepipe a-stickin' thru, A telephone line and some iron tie prods, Defying the two above-mentioned gods To melt that assortment of lightning rods, And sizzle your carcass, too.

The lookout is held to the topmost rock, With glass all around to show, In the blinding flashes, a tree outside With a lightning splinter along one side, And a glimpse of a chasm both steep and wide For thousands of feet below.

The clouds roll'd down on that mountain top To scatter their charge of fire, The telephone wiring would snap and crack And St. Elmo's fire on the lookout shack Would flash from the wire to the roof and back Suggesting my funeral pyre.

Then the clatter of hail on the broad tin roof And the howl of the whooping gale Were drowned in the thunder that ripped & rolled Rattled and echoed a thousand fold 'Til my hair stood up and my blood ran cold And even my tan grew pale.

You may tell of prayers that are said in church And those that are said in bed: If the prayers that I made for my wicked past And the good resolutions I made so fast Had been only partially made to last, What a different life I'd 'a led!

But since my return from that lookout shack No lightning that flashes here, No thunder that rolls and no gale that blows No hail that rattles, or sleets or snows Can add one bit to my tale of woes; I've a paralyzed sense of fear.

G.A.B.

http://www.kenschory.com/GAB/chap17.htm