Window Seat

On my flight back to Washington at 4 am

in air marbled by night and snow

I leaned against the oval glass and saw

tiny bodies of light pushing slowly

down the mountain roads, each sphere

its own life full of sideways winds.

The flight attendant was humming

a movie score, pouring the coffee into paper cups.

I was thinking that every story I have

ever written in my head

has been about going home

when the student in the aisle seat tapped my shoulder

and said I do not want you to worry but do you mind

if I pray 

while thirty thousand feet beneath his question

people plowed through a snowstorm hardly stopping

to ask permission. As he whispered

in Arabic I imagined the white flurries

breezing into the sand gusts outside my old house

in the desert and pretended I could understand

while cars floated through the chalkboard dark

like prayers released from airplanes

granted sudden phosphorescence and instructed

not to drift upward, but to address

the stranger.