For Alesia Poem by William B. Watterson

It rained the day she died.
Somber, stygian clouds crept across Beech Mountain
In the night, suffusing the swales between somnolent hills,
Drenching the ancient peaks, and we awoke to sodden skies.
Keen, jagged bolts of lightning rent the murky air asunder.
Thunder spoke in strident stentorian tones, undulating,
Reverberating like petulant, vengeful voices of wrathful gods,
Palpable and puissant.

Three days we had been waiting.
She lingered, a curiously empty vessel,
comatose, crushed, despoiled,
Life cruelly curtailed, future precipitously purloined.
At last sorrow flowed in mounting rivulets through desolate streets.

And Grandfather Mountain, massif antediluvian,
stark, silent sentinel,
Lay as he has lain three-hundred million years,
His craggy, primordial profile upturned to the weeping heavens.
The sun, we knew, would shine again,
Though never quite so bright.