Northern Lights

The Northlands…
Where summer doggedly digs in its heels
in a losing tug o’ war against winter’s might.
Where spring and fall are merely formalities
to round out the calendar.

The Northlands…
Where the first frost arrives early and hard,
slapping some sense into Indian summer dreamers.
The air turns frigid…crisp…clear.
The cold becomes a prism that sharpens—focuses;
creating a crystalline window to the heavens.

Trees slip out of their summer attire.
Now stark, thin versions of their summer selves,
they seem to shiver against the skyline.
Trunks and branches create a mosaic defining the horizon.

The Northlands…
Where the sun relinquishes its feeble warmth
as darkness steals over the landscape early,
dragging its black shroud behind it.
Silence descends, stillness rules, and it is night.

Stars, hiding their luster in homage to the sun by day
tentatively peek through the velvet of the nighttime heavens.
Slowly, gaining confidence in their own brilliance,
they begin their slow waltz across the sky’s dance floor.

This then is a winter’s night in the Northlands…
Ah--but the wonder is yet to come.

He stood silently, reverently, his eyes raised.
His breath punctuated the exertion of his trek to this spot,
and only his footprints testified to his journey.
The cold seeped in beneath undefended flesh
and wrapped its frigid arms around his bones.
He shivered, but not for the cold, but with anticipation…

A soft glow bloomed in the northern sky.
Barely visible, it could almost be denied as ever existing.
A glorious glimmer of green descending like a curtain,
sheer and silken enough to allow the stars to shine through…
even framing them to their best advantage.
As the magic played out, the emerald hues were ribboned
with rich, vibrant slashes of crimson.
The surging performance was on!
Witness the dance of the nighttime rainbow!
The colors mix and meld…shapes form and disappear.
Beautiful bolts of red streak across the green background,
pocked with the envious illumination of heaven’s stars.
Whirling, twirling, skipping, jabbing…spreading across the sky.

Finally, the grand performance moved directly overhead
and he gazed through the kaleidoscope into heaven .
He imagined (or did he?) winged beings amid the colors,
dancing and celebrating joys untold…unimagined.
For the briefest of moments he was lifted.
He too danced and celebrated.

Too soon, he felt his soul plunge earthward.
The colors diminished--the lights pulsed and weakened.
He returned to himself…and to himself alone.
His only consolations the hope that filled his heart,
the magnificence of simple awe, and
the splendor of being small.

He turned and retraced his steps to the warmth he had abandoned, wishing…

God watched and smiled knowingly
as His angels returned one-by-one.
Each still beaming from their playful interlude,
still joyous from what they had done.

They had known the wanderer was below them
And more--they knew what he longed to know.
So, they lifted him to glimpse his true self
As he danced within the night’s rainbow.