AURORA BOREALIS: METAPHOR AND ORDER

In the night sky, beyond the promontory

to the north, there is a faint glow that is not

moonlight, and is rare at this latitude.

The iPhone shows the shifting colours the eye

cannot see tonight – red, green, violet;

bits of the sun borne on the solar wind,

caught in the earth’s electro-magnetic

net, that keeps us, chance inhabitants

of a chance planet, safe from the hot hale.

Long, long before the rules of chemistry

and physics, there was order through metaphor:

the Goddess of the Dawn and the God

of the North cavorting…