Oh The Weather The Weather! Poem by Sheena Blackhall

At the battle of Waterloo,
Two days torrential rain
Hammered into the ground.
Thunder & lightning
Rent the gloomy heavens
Up to the ankles in mud,42,00 died

The night the Titanic sank,
No moonlight,
No clouds,
Calm waters
Frozen to the very bone
1,500 drowned or died in the sea
Pale as the ice floes floating silent round

When the bomb destroyed Nagasaki
There were tropical rain squalls
Flashes of lightning
Nothing as bright as the death
That fell from the skies,
Snapping trees like matchsticks
Vaporising people
39,000 gone

The Great Fire of London
Was a horror waiting to happen
A long, hot, rainless summer
An easterly wind
Took a spark to ignite a tinderbox
90% of houses wiped away

At the execution of King Charles 1st
Black frost turned roads dangerous
The skies were grey and cold
Ice floes sailed in the Thames
Wearing two shirts, the monarch
Walked to the block

On February 13th 1692
At night, under cover of sleep
A blizzard howling
Red coat soldiers, Campbells
Rose to slit the throats
Of their hosts of several days
38 killed where they lay
Some say in the hills
And along the wider glen
300 more were slaughtered
The weather finished off
Those the soldiers missed