Early October, White Aurora

5 a.m. and almost clear skies. The stars
bright but fuzzy, a bleeding white watercolor.
She walked the dog in monotony because
this year each day was the same rise and fall.
Only the darkness seemed different when the season
was something that just happened.
When she looked up, she noticed a pale haze,
a ribbon pulsing across the sky. She stopped walking
and thought an alien force field? And then,
oh God, will I fight or will I flee?—
and then, no, no, it must be a wave of global pollution
riding a current around the world, so then
she was grappling with guilt and frustration,
her own contribution, how impossible
humanness is. Please know she doesn’t sleep well.
She is often afraid and sad. So maybe that’s why
it took her so long to feel it, that familiar
pull of the aurora, a pull like a tide neither stranding
nor swallowing, and knew, with a sigh,
the lights without color, and she thought
how sometimes even the spectacular has a faint form,
and so she kept looking up, and I loved her then,
this woman so briefly, briefly,
outside herself, making her way back.