I had always thought that the aurora borealis
was a god's breath in winter,
but they are, I am told, ice crystals
in the stratosphere filtering light,
the ephemeral, not quite there light at
the edges of stars, the low horizon of the sun
in the polar latitudes; clear water crystals
in an unpolluted sky far from mine.

And what of curious magnetic fields? Do they
splay the crystals just so, like a god's breath?

In the ghostly stratosphere am I floating,
a solitary crystal of water sublimed
among a multitude of crystals as simply sublimed,
swept along by currents of wind,
by gusts of electromagnetism, and in a sigh

of knowing allow the ephemeral light
in all its ageless travel to animate the glowing god within.

p.m.