A Prayer for Flight 370

Somewhere there is a plane. 
A real plane; 
not a blip on a radar, 
or a pinging black box; 
not a fleck on a satellite image, 
or a headline on loop. 
Not a conspiracy theory 
about structural integrity, 
or floating debris, 
or an unsolved mystery. 

Somewhere there is a plane. 
A real plane, 
once filled with real people; 
travelling to meet, to hug, 
to care for, comfort, or congratulate, 
to cry or to laugh with 
other real people, 
whose world has now slipped off its axis; 
people to whom northern arcs 
and southern arcs 
and ACARS mean nothing, 
and every new dawn brings 
hope and sadness, entwined together 
like conjoined twins. 

Somewhere there is a plane. 
A real plane; 
and somewhere a son, a mother, 
a friend or a brother, 
shakes with unspeakable pain. 
For them, 
no sea is too great; no news is too late. 
For them, 
our hearts must break,  
and our tears must mix with theirs, 
and our prayers 
must not cease, but instead 
form a ladder on which their grief can climb 
to a place beyond the stars; 
all the way to heaven’s gates, 
until they reach the ears of the One 
who charts all our paths, 
and orchestrates all our fates. 

Somewhere there is a plane.