Advent (aurora borealis)

 

Advent (aurora borealis)

 

 The Northern Lights in Southern Canada are like Christmas in July.
 Red-green specters fading into being, rising and drifting through the night sky.
 
Elusive to the human eye, their dance is caught like a cougar on a night-cam,
a clip-still capture of a flying flame, more caricature than spirit.
 
I saw you real.
Living, you catalyzed a soul’s breath of energetic light and caressed the stars.
A cold fusion of sun and space igniting this Earth-bound child.
 
I saw the angels dancing on Jacob’s Ladder, felt the pointed message of the Nativity star settle in my chest.
 
I saw Mary’s roses glowing in the night, blossom and leaf. Saw graceful stems, needle-like, lacing the great gap between Heaven and Earth. The Christ Child, as tall as the sky, as old as the stars and as young as tomorrow’s sunrise.
 
There were no shepherds in my field that night.

Only three horses stood with me, eyes full of moonlight, mist rising from warm muzzles.
The angels sang cricket songs while four goats kneeled in the summer grass, their munching mouths forming a percussive beat.

Together, standing in the July night. Together we heard the whispered ‘wait!’ and felt the patience of the trees, dark and leggy around us like Stonehenge.
 
While the wise wonder and wander.
While the innkeeper stirs and mumbles in his sleep.
While Herod feasts with flatterers.
 
We wait.