The Missing

As it their bodies became lighter,
ten of those seated
in front pews began to float,
and then to lie down as it on
a bed. Then pass down the aisle,
as it on a conveyor belt of pure air,
slow as a funeral cortege,
past the congregants, some Sinking
to their knees in prayer.
One woman, rocking back and forth,
muttered, What about me lord,
why not me?

The Risen stream slowly, so slowly
Out the gothic doors
and up to the sky, finches darting
deftly between them.

Ten streets away,
a husband tries to hold onto the feet
of his floating wite. At times her force
lits him slightly off the ground,
his grip slipping. He falls
to his knees with just her high-
heeled shoe in his hand.
He shields and squints his eyes
as she is backlit by the sun.

A hundred people start tloating
from the windows of a tower block;
from far enough away they could be
black smoke trom spreading flames.

A father with his child on top his shoulders;
men in sandcoloured galibeas; a woman
with an Elvis quitt and vintage glasses,
a deep indigo hijab flapping in the wind;
an artist in a wax-cloth headwrap:
all airborne, these superheroes,
this airborne pageantry of faith,
this flock of believers.

Amongst the cirrus clouds, floating like hair,
they begin to look like a separate cily.
Someone looking on could mistake them
tor new arrivants to earth.
They are the city of the missing.
We, now, the cily of the stayed.