Under the Northern Lights

A Willerby Story

They gathered on the green and lay back on deckchairs and sun loungers brought from their gardens.

The lights had been forecast on the television, radio and internet, and the green offered the best unbroken view of the sky. There was nothing strange about everyone ending up there.

The ghosts and spirits were quiet that night.

There was no weird call.

Over the heavens an orchestra played a silent symphony of ribbons and arcs in flickering blue, pink, purple and red.

Dan found it hard to believe such beauty was caused by merely the mechanics of violence on the surface of a distant star.

At midnight under the Northern Lights, words like ‘collision’ and ‘photon’ meant nothing to him and he was sure if he was to see things in just a slightly different way, he might lose his grip on the ground and tumble up and away into the night.

Perhaps it was because he lived in Willerby; perhaps that didn’t matter.

For days afterwards he could not escape thoughts of hunters under ice-age moons and ancient astronomers on the Nile plotting the arc of blazing chariots.

He thought of all the wise women in their deep time and of shaman gazing up on their ancestors. He thought of astronauts looking down on their children. He thought of physicists in colliders and priests in cathedrals.

He thought of them all – like him – peering into the sky and trying to find meaning there.

He thought of them all and wondered after their dreams.