Aurora

I am waiting for aberrations of light.

For quiet curves to arc and flutter,
to break into form.

For the skiffle of static to announce
shifting centres
of green, violet, white-blue –
colour as its own pure note,
a Kandinsky composition.

For contours to shape the charged air –
now a back-lit mountain, now a man
emerging from his own electric shadow.

For guttering light to veil the moon
and stars, unveil them.

While every poem ever written
about the moon rises before me,
I wait here, in the dark,

with my eyes wide open.

Science Museum’s Dana Centre website, October 2008
‘Electric Shadow’ (Bloodaxe) 2011