Aurora - Nov 16 2025

 

Aurora

Nov 16 2025



Most nights, we head north;

the dogs, running off in all directions

while I set a brisk pace

on the empty backroad.

When it’s cold and dry

stars fill the sky

in a brilliant celestial light-show.

But while the Greeks saw stories everywhere

the Big Dipper is all I can make out,

with the Pole Star

a steady light

a short distance off;

an astronomical constant

countless generations have followed.

I scan the sky

peer at the horizon;

hopefully

but mostly disappointed. 

Am I too far south,

is my timing be off?

Has the sun’s corona

been oddly quiet?

But the other day 

the view was spectacular. 

Curtains of green and red 

ribboning

and shimmering

and strobing overhead.

They followed the curve of the sky,

and under them

beneath its immensity

I felt immeasurably small,

an insignificant man

in a vast indifferent universe

 — smallness,

the sine qua non of awe.

You’d think that science

would undermine the wonder,

knowledge demystify. 

Charged particles

from the sun’s coronal flux,

caught in the ionosphere

by earth’s magnetic field.

An invisible shield,

that deflects the solar wind

so life can exist;

improbable as it is

on this blue-and-green planet

3rd from the sun.

But knowledge never does 

rob nature of its power.

So I look up

and feel at one with the ancients,

just as small

and just as filled with awe.

Who didn’t see creation

as governed by physics

or natural law;

they saw a warning

a promise

a message from their gods.

Not that rainbows and comets didn’t foretell;

but compared to this, were underwhelming

and too easy to miss.

I think the absence of sound 

makes it that much more affecting.

Because silence is distance;

too far away 

for sound to travel,

yet big enough to fill the sky.

Like distant lightning,

when you keep straining to hear

but the thunder never comes.

Because seeing is believing

and silence focuses the mind.

We are, after all, visual creatures

who depend on light

to bring the world in.

And because who needs sound

with pyrotechnics like this?

It’s the weak who call for attention

not the powerful.

Who simply presume their status,

going about their business quietly

and wearing their power easily.

Who have no need of bluster

bragging

or false bravado.

And who

 — with the understated elegance 

of the privileged class —

know when to stop.

It was just one night

and then they were gone.

But I keep looking up,

hoping I never get so jaded

that the wonder fades,

or fancy myself too big

in a universe as vast as this;

a mortal man

humbled by my smallness

and filled with quiet awe.

Taken Nov 12 of this year by my friend Sherry-Lynn while out for a late walk: