Searching for the Northern Lights While My Wife Sleeps
By Luci Huhn
The last time I saw them, I was in high school,
dancing in a wide-open field,
tripping
over corn stubble, under the green and pink ribbons
Galileo named for us in science class—
beauty—
like a Kool-Aid-stained rainstorm far off
in the distance.
So long ago,
I’m willing to get out of bed, the sun flaring
for the third night straight.
Quietly, I slip
out of the new sheets, the ones my wife says
feel smooth enough, but sound like paper.
I search
through the murky pixels of the window screen,
the sky thick with pitch.
No luck.
Zombie-like, I edge down our porch steps,
wander the moss-dark pathways,
hold my phone
up for its camera to see what my human eye
cannot.
Somewhere out there luminous
solar bits are crashing against the far
side of clouds.
But frightened
by what might be an animal in the hedges or
just not needing to see again
what I once
danced to, I find my way back into the horizon-
blue sheets – percale that crinkles
as I inch closer
to tell her the sky is inky dark—no green, no pink—
knowing she’s awake and listening. Luci Huhn is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, whose poems have appeared in Ploughshares, West Branch, SWWIM, Leon Literary Review, Rattle, and South Florida Poetry Review, among others. Her chapbook, The Years That Come After, was published by Breakwater Press. She lives and writes in Southwest Michigan.
01/30 / Poetry Reading and Conversation with visiting poet-in-residence Krysten Hill + local writer Denise Duhamel (with special guest Julie Marie Wade) / The BBar at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 7-8:30 pm EST / Free
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Beautiful.