Aurora
Aurora It called us out of the shadow of the mountains— from the house, the gravel road winding through town, into the fields thick with moose and fireweed.We looked for it in the museum at Fairbanks, in between totems and bear skin, the light caught on the blues of the television screen. It was there and not there—lingering over us, a halo hovering above the surface of the earth. I imagine it covering us with its frayed fingers in the dark, as we squat in the wet grass bordering the Chena, the truck’s headlights making our breath glisten.We searched for it in the wrong season, like Halley who thought he would die before he saw it, or perhaps die seeing it. It was the wrong season, and that is the point. Bathed in summer’s last sun, hands wrapped against the cool dampness, our faces wrapped against mosquitos, we wanted to be shocked by electricity, by flame—flushed red with wanting, our feet soaked in river water and mud, wanted to watch it grow bright over ice as foretold by clairvoyants, astronomers, Indians. But no ice, nothing shattered the sky.We heard stories of its attraction knocking out power lines that picketed the sky, eating lights away from homes where the field was the strongest. Heard of how it got into dogs’ hair, making their coats snap and spark, stand on end.We had traveled far— rolled the name on our tongues like sweetness, like Galileo once did in a dream, uncurling from his mouth into the world.We had driven miles into the bush, backs against bluebells and wild roses, our breath magnetic in the light, tangible between wet grass and darkness.We waited for color to thread the sky, to spit with sound even though science can’t prove the crackling, the hiss that Eskimos have heard for centuries—denying light and sound could occur at the selfsame time.We waited for it to glisten and flicker, tried to beckon it with our whistle, with the quiet rubbing of our hands. ...
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