Beyond the Gentleness of Sky

As I write this my home is stalactites and cave;
there is not too much left of the Home of the Brave.
For the land that I love and all countries alike
are now rubble and ash from a meteor strike.

It was spotted by amateurs one moonless night
through an old telescope on the Isle of Wight.
But there wasn’t much time for the Earth to prepare
as this large asteroid from deep space hit the air.

The molecular friction ignited the sky,
(it had eyes for the Earth and did not pass it by.)
A great roar then occurred when it plunged to the ground,
and the few that survive all remember the sound.

O the energy that Hiroshima once felt
was intense because it made the skyscrapers melt.
But this shot from the heavens expunging the sun
made the hydrogen bombs look like caps from a gun.

Since ground zero was somewhere in Washington state,
the Pacific northwest had a horrible fate.
And the fireball raged at ten thousand degrees
from the top of the Rockies to south of Belize.

Winds then sped like fanged demons with sickles to wield;
cataclysm crossed continent through farm and field.
Anything slightly standing succumbed to fierce scream;
all the hilltops and plateaus lost forest and stream.

Then the sea felt the shock from the impact Earth bore,
and sent tidal waves miles high to every shore.
For the planet was wounded by ancient debris
and reacted in spasm on land and at sea.

It was raining destruction just like in Pompeii,
but the fallout was worldwide on that fateful day.
A great chunk of the Earth’s crust was blasted to bits,
(on the grand cosmic scale Mother Earth takes her hits.)

So I etch this in stone now which seems apropos;
there’s a nuclear winter but it isn’t snow.
I remember a time when the bombs made us fret;
yet a mountain from space was the ultimate threat.


36 Lines

Writer's Cramp Winner 2-16-13