meanings

At 3am in the morning I departed a neighbour's house.
Fields, and fens and midnight air.
Orange street lamps over the lullay little town.
I drew a deep breath.
The night was hushed and warm.
A yellow moon to the west.
Some clouds, some stars.
I intended to pray the third mystery of light, part of the rosary meditation beloved of Catholics, as I walked.
This mystery is announced as The Proclamation Of The Kingdom Of God.
I was turning for home when a flickering of light drew my eyes back to the ancient fields.
Luminescence flared behind the clouds and in open space.
My jaw dropped.
An unusually spectacular lightning storm was underway.
We don't get many of these in the midlands.
I'd say I've seen about ten lightning flashes in the last half century.
Tonight's storm was unlike anything I have ever seen.
Flashes of superb brightness seeming to coalesce without any direction.
Lightning bolts manifesting in streams rolling and leaping between clouds.
Irridescent flarings high up that had no perceivable form.
Yet more luminescences low to the horizon.
Never quite touching the ground.
Moments of stillness and darkness so that you thought it was over, then more light, more flashes, more flarings than before.
Spread out over hundreds of miles of countryside.
On and on and on.
Simultaneously illumining the line of the Wicklow Mountains to the east of Kilcullen while glittering in an arc of electrical detonations through the vault of sky and on towards the west.
It was extraordinary.
Eerily it made no sound.
There was near perfect silence for the entire first hour except for the occasional sighing of a night wind.
As dawn came up around 5am in the second hour of the storm, the flashes of lightning seemed to be directly overhead and now there was thunder.
The thunder is rolling outside as I write these words.

Less than 24 hours earlier those citizens of Ireland who endorse the barbarism of abortion as a normative behaviour, had prevailed in a referendum to legalise the murder of unborn children.