Amsterdam behind
Minneapolis ahead
far below an Icelandic town glows
dimly in the arctic night
mirrored above by another glow
stretching across the sky
like a green electric dream
conjured by the town's collective sleep
barely visible behind the reflection
of my traveling companion's
drowsy drooping head
a planetary tempest rages in a
strange domain of the upper atmosphere.

I can't see the entire arc which
when viewed from space
forms a radiant continental
circle of light
poorly centered on the North Pole
displaced south toward the throbbing
power grids of North America
but I see enough of it laid oblong and
flat by perspective to suggest it's
entire form
the eastern edge is visible
the western edge has yet
to come into view
incandescent globes and strands
dance with a chaotic
yet almost imperceptible motion
suggesting a performance by ghostly
characters who randomly enter
and exit a scene unfolding in a
cosmic theater-in-the-round.

I invite my aisle-bound neighbor to look
she talks about watching the lights
from a Montana cabin last summer.
Time passes and my ionospheric companions
wax and wane and wax
their dance now stretching
out of sight in both directions.
I watch a bad movie on the screen
I listen to it but I am distracted

by the ephemeral parade outside my window
the plane moves closer to the show
and it moves toward us
and I hear a crackle in my headphones.

The crackle comforts like an immense
electromagnetic campfire
we are immersed in the fire
no one controls how we experience it
no one possesses it
it happens and we are part of it
the crackle and the glow weave the plane
and it's civilized contents
into the primal fabric of the universe.
Suddenly we've become trivially small
reminding me of a similar
implosion of scale I experienced
the first time I ever saw
the Andromeda galaxy
with my naked eyes
bigger than the Moon
bigger than anything else
lurking just below visibility
until night vision abruptly elevated it
into my awareness -
as the surrounding corn fields
collapsed into a dimensionless void
I found myself floating alone
in a galaxy-studded infinity.

Mercifully, the movie ends
the cabin monitor places
a cartoon airplane
on a video map
just southwest of Hudson Bay
the western edge of the
fluorescent
flattened
circle disappears behind me
as we continue to pursue
the fading embers
of yesterday's sunset.