NORTH

Beautiful the luminous bands
that grace the Northern sky
wreaking havoc with
more conventional time
turning night into day
rotating my internal compass
from due South to due North
drawing my thoughts
ever Northward
until the 60th parallel
is finally reached.
There, at the Alberta boundary
on the Slave River
in the South Mackenzie
a small speck in the huge
frozen Northwest Territories
some two thousand five hundred
hardy, independent, tenacious
individuals live, love, dream,
carry on with their daily lives.

Strange the mysterious forces
that, much as the aurora borealis
puts on its nightly show,
drew two complete strangers
well over a thousand miles apart,
together in empathy and friendship,
was it the forces of Nature at work
or is it beyond our understanding.

Herbert Holzbauer
© September 2002

Midi: "Eye in the Sky"
Sequencer: Alan Parson

Photo: "Aurora"
Courtesy of NASA (April 1997)