Aurora

The Whole Night Sky

They come unasked—the way rain comes
or darkness, or springs first green uprising—
not earned, not owed, but given into being
slipped like grace through some unsealed door.
A tremor of light breathes and bleeds along the prairie’s edge
a bright bestowal weaving the wide sky
sowing its story over the watching world and the unwatching alike
lavish whether we are there to receive it or not.

This gift unfolds for every eye to see.
Light arches over saint and sinner both
over the hands that tended and restored
and hands that tore more
than the earth could bare.
There is no holding back, no measured grace
it spills as water spills from some deep source
unbound by our unreadiness,
yet bound in faithfulness to something past are names
some larger love that will not count the cost.

The stars bear witness with me
and they hold their steady vigil
while the colours bloom beneath them.
Together we behold the heavens opening
their hidden room where mystery is
deep enough to hold both sorrow and delight.
The colours fold along the cold edge
where the darkness looms and something
calls to something yet untold within me.
Light ascends and falls, and traces a pulse
the heartbeat of the world’s wild core
etched emerald across the northern spaces.

The sky does not condemn what we have done.
It opens over all—over the broken and the blessed—
and turns our very shadows to shards of its own radiance.
Its light gathers each deed
the cruel, the kind, the small, the overlooked, the unforgiven
and folds them into one great shining confession.

I stand at the edge of the prairie field
caught in the quiet
heart beating in time.
For a moment I see the world is seamless
the light, the land, the dark between
and I am part of it.