Earlier this year, Hannah Stultz, the daughter of Charles and Michelle Stultz, submitted this poem to a contest that was held for student poets. Hannah is in 8th grade at Forbush Middle School. Hannah’s poem was selected from thousands of entries as one of the ten best in her grade division.

Aftershock

Thunder booms through the sky, a midday in May,

The aftershock of the noise takes us back a day,

Reflects our lives upon our eyes,

Unleashes the truth from thousands of lies.

Shows us the way our life is supposed to be,

As the softness of the rain sets our minds free.

The sun dances behind a single thundercloud,

The raindrops hiding in them begin to overcrowd,

They fall down like stars from the evening skies,

Like millions of tiny tears, falling from our eyes,

The grass and the flowers are soaked all the way through,

The sky is converted into a million different shades and hues.

Our earlier days flash before our eyes,

Makes us remember all of our faded goodbyes.

Pain seeps in, beneath our placid skin,

Like it was long ago, they way it had been.

The feeling of the raindrops washes our pain away.

When all this is over, the world will be less gray.

But for the time being, we’ll let the trees around us softly sway,

And let the aftershock of the thunder’s noise take us back another day.

-Hannah Stultz