The Pause in the Plummet for Prayer

They'd plunged thousands of feet, crash-certain, and now,
Miles above the Pacific, a passenger
Walked the aisle like a stewardess. "Let us pray,"
She said, and believers, those passengers did,
Filling the inexplicable nine minutes
Of frail stability with supplication.
That plane scribbled like a toddler on the sky
While every one of them felt saved, we're told, Flight
Two Sixty-One's miracle joining the best
Stories that begin Did you know ...? passed forward
By the bucket brigade of word-of-mouth, and
Emptied, sent back by the living, retraced from
Here to there to witnesses who cannot speak.

No matter the disaster stories we hear
And repeat, a marvel of wishes spreads from
Our words—healings, sightings, the necessary
Resurrections growing like the hybrid tree
We planted, in seven years the tallest thing
On our street; in seven more so enormous
We took it down, and yet it drives a thousand
Descendants from roots spread the length of our yard.
Our neighbors walk out to a field of saplings
Sprung up like gifts from the magi of desire.
This morning, standing among them, we marvel
At the force of rebirth, how, if everything
Returned, we would stand in the darkness of awe.

Copyright © 2008 Gary Fincke All rights reserved
from The Fire Landscape
The University of Arkansas Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission