Here

                                                  The moon and sun are eternal travelers.  Even the years wander on.                                        A lifetime adrift in a boat or in old age leading a tired horse into the years,                                        every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.                                                                                                                                    Matsuo Basho Week after week, the aurora comes and goes, sometimes clear along the starry horizon, sometimes a glow behind cloud. Its light gives me a sense of the depth, the dimensionality of space, like looking into the greenish hearts of the marbles that lived in a bag in the hall cupboard when I was a child – they had movement in their depths that took me right inside it if I looked long enough. The aurora, too, lets me into vastness.     A pair of golden whistlers – large-eyed forest birds with the penetrating call that’s

                                        … in the flattest part of North Dakota                                         on a starless moonless night                                         no breath of wind                                         a man could light a candle                                         then walk away                                         every now and then                                         he could turn and see                                         the candle burning                                          …                                         somewhere between the seventeenth and eighteenth mile                                         he would lose the light                                         if he were walking backwards                                         he would know the exact moment                                         when he lost the flame                                         he could step forward and find it again