We were treated a few nights back, in the Northern Hemisphere anyways, to a spectacular Northern Lights show, otherwise known as the Aurora Borealis.

These shots were taken of the skies above my little house in the Hinterlands with an Iphone 14. Living as far north as I do, I am often treated to the cosmic dance of solar rays hitting the magnetosphere, but this performance was something a little special.

Most of the time, color is hard to make out with the naked eye. It's generally ghostly wisps of whit, discernible from cirrus clouds because they let the stars shine through and appear as dancing white hot ... actually super cold ... flames. If we are very lucky, the greens will get a little more showy; apropos, it is a shade associate with aliens; and we are indeed getting visited, or at least glanced at by visitors from outer space. My smartphone's extended exposure is generally need to reveal the reds and purples. This however was not the case 4 nights back.

This night ... it was all about the reds. The sky was simply rosy and full of rays. The phone did, of course, deepen the palette. I have previously said and I will say it again, it was as though, not to be out shone by my neighbours string lights, Nature had decorated for Christmas. Martha Steward could not have done better.

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There's a Manta Ray in My Living Room

There’s a manta ray
floating in my living room
Peaceful spectre,
inhabitant of the deep marine

There’s a manta ray
floating in my living room
Rippling above my arm-chair
and its matching settee

There’s a mantra ray in my living room …

Never slithered a step through the slime
the soil, or sand
Surpassing bipedalism without a scale to spy
Sea to air, a limbless evolutionary leap
Featherless, she effortlessly swims through the sky

There’s a manta ray floating in my living room
Her vocal chords are forming; to sing she’s beginning
There’s a manta ray floating in my living room
Soon she’ll be sharing all the secrets of her being

There’s a mantra ray in my living room …

Shutters open on an angry crowd below
A dark sky is rendered with a flashing streak of light
Thunder echoes with the mob’s curses and their pleas
Accord with the manta, replaced with fugue
fear, and strife

There was a manta ray floating in my living room
She’s long since departed
with the wind and the torrents
There was a manta ray floating in my living room
But now just a carelessly flipped page, of a lost verse

There was a manta ray in my living room

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From X ...

Believe or not, I did have a dream just like this once. There Is a Manta Ray in My Living Room is published in Monsters, Avatars, and Angel, my collection of short stories and poems. Link below. It is my offering to the prompt #ray. The AI image is courtesy of grok