Heavenly Flight

Heavenly Flight

By Sarah Sloat

The flight from Rome taxis, turns

on the continent and its cathedrals,

churches famished for priests, vaulted altars,

bare before the rare band of pilgrims

and handfuls of unholy tourists.

The plane is full of us, my seat tucked

among a pack of Catholics returning to the terra nova.

Four hours aloft, I slump in my seat,

buffeted by fellow travelers’ frustrations.

The Catholics’ guide holds court a row back

on the future of their church, the need

to reconsider vows of poverty and chastity.

Beside me, a pilgrim has been mouthing prayers for hours,

emptying herself; prayer after rote prayer

spills from her tongue like beads.

Now and then she stops for air, only to plunge in

again, breathless, as to an urgent question.

I cannot hear the words; I rise and sink

with her inflection, or twitch when her lips stick

on the thirst created by the cabin air, so dry

our hair lifts crisp with static, ludicrously charged

as if we were mystics hurtling home.

Across the aisle a pilgrim removes his shoes,

turns them over to rest his feet upon their soles.

He talks of St. Francis with the girl

perched lotus-style beside him.

Francis, he says, St. Francis was fed up,

he did an about-face to become a saint, a miracle.

I think we could all be saints, he says, all of us.

Fingering his crucifix, he shifts his weight

from the window and declares

the flight is awful, then thinks twice--

no, no, it’s heavenly,

a heavenly flight, he laughs

and finishes his drink.