Far-away friends

 I’ve never seen the Northern Lights.

At least, not anywhere outside of my own mind. But I’ve always been fascinated by them. There’s something so ethereal, so magical about the way they move across the darkened sky-something that can only be hinted at in photographs and never fully understood. This poem, written late last summer, is the closest I have ever gotten to witnessing that magic first-hand.

I hold this poem close to my heart, because it reminds me of the friend who inspired it, and because I’m weirdly in love with the cosmos.

Everything about it is so far out of my reach, so vastly beyond my comprehension. But I look at the stars in all their unattainability, and it somehow brings me closer to a God whose reach will never be too short to find me where I am, even in all of the world’s chaos.

Maybe distance is what makes love stronger.

 

 

An Apostasy of Light

“Nothing gold can stay.” ~Robert Frost

The sky did something out of character last night.

Prompted-

according to the weather on Channel 7-

by a solar flare,

which, in short,

has something to do with solar wind

and its interaction with our atmosphere

and which caused the Northern Lights

to dance their way down from the tundra

and make an appearance over our acres and acres

of rolling cornfields.

We took our places below the wide dome of night,

far away from interfering streetlights

whose bright, indifferent haze

would have prevented us from witnessing the

miracle of blue-green light

stretching out over the horizon

as though connecting our world to the one above.

Cameras forgotten on seats in the car,

we stared, transfixed,

as the light crept slowly upward,

melting further across the star-lit ceiling

until its cue for the grand finale-

For one infinitesimal, eternal moment

a blaze of gold pulsed against itself,

then, giving in to the pull of gravity,

faded out of sight and into memory.