Lightning Strike! Poem by David Lewis Paget

She worked part-time as a seamstress,
An ordinary sort of girl,
But one with a dash of blue-eyed wit,
An endearing brunette curl.
I'd plucked up the courage to ask her out,
For me it was more than like,
And everything seemed to be going well
Before the lightning strike.

One day we walked to the countryside
By the fields of wheat and hay,
Rambling on by the hedgerows there
On a darkening Autumn day.
I stole a kiss in a grove of trees
From the lips that taste like wine,
And then she whispered her love for me
All coy, with her eyes a-shine.

The clouds were gathering overhead
And soon it began to rain,
We sought some shelter, under a ledge
Right next to a field of grain,
But she was nervous, clung to my hand
When the thunder growled on high,
‘The gods are grumbling over the land, '
She said, and began to cry.

I said, ‘There's nothing to fret about,
It's only an Autumn storm,
We'll just stay here and we'll wait it out, '
But Michelle was lost, forlorn.
A mighty clap came from overhead
And she screamed, ran out in the rain,
When a bolt of lightning struck her there,
A flash, then a shriek of pain!

I dashed on out, and I picked her up
But her clothes were burned and charred,
Her hair was white and it stood on end,
Full of some potent charge.
She rolled her eyes and she looked at me
Her face, a panic attack,
And then I saw that her sky-blue eyes
Had turned to a deep jet black.

The clouds were tumbling overhead
Though the rain was passing on,
The lightning strikes were further away
She cried, ‘Has the thunder gone? '
She sat there trembling in my arms
But focussed her gaze on high,
And said at last, as she stared above,
‘There are demons up in the sky! '

She spent a month in the hospital
And they said she'd be okay,
I'll never forget the way she looked
When I picked her up that day,
She huddled up in the car and said,
‘The world outside has changed,
For fire and flashes are everywhere
There's a lightning strike in my brain.'

‘And now, in the darkest corners I
Have visions of swarms of rats,
While up in the eaves, and waiting there,
A host of vampire bats,
There's crawling things that I didn't see
Before, when my eyes were blue,
And awful spiders with fourteen legs,
Right now, they're crawling on you.'

I took her home, and put her to bed,
I thought that she needed rest,
A week went by, but she'd sit and cry,
I thought she was quite obsessed.
Then I started hearing crawling things
At night, when I went to sleep,
And woke to a creature on my chest
That made my own flesh creep.

There's demons up in the clouds, ' she said,
‘And fires scorching the ground,
And everywhere that I look, I see
Where evil spirits abound.'
I couldn't take it a moment more,
These things invaded my mind,
I did what anyone else would do,
And now, Michelle is blind!

18 August 2014