Cielo

Cielo

 

Valparaiso, Chile

 

 

On a gray and grafitti’d street 

in a town named for paradise,

three men in fluorescent jackets 

take a bread and beer break. 

With my Spanish limited to nouns, 

I ask the way to Ascensor 

Espíritu Santo—the funicular 

named Holy Spirit.

  

The men smile, and one points

around the corner.

I thank them, walk five steps, 

pay 100 pesos, and climb 

into the square box 

that will take me up the steep hill. 

 

A man sits inside on the thin bench, 

holding a plastic bag of fresh pan— 

the funicular fills with its fragrance.

Another man enters,

then an old woman, also carrying

a bag of bread. Then one more woman

and a young man. We are six. 

We smell like a panadaria.

 

We sit and stand in silence. 

I want to ask how often these residents 

ascend the oiled tracks, but I don’t have 

the words beyond bread and heaven.  

 

The box lurches and we launch up—

the three of us on the bench shifting 

into each other in a bodily kiss of greeting, 

and the three standing sway as if starting to dance. 

Who extends the invitation?

And to what are we invited? 

 

We climb the mountain without using 

our own limbs. We have entered a body 

beyond ourselves. We have been invited 

to a communion of passage, 

drinking height as we rise up the rails 

to a different story. And though we don’t feel it, 

we are being transformed in these loud 

seconds of ascension, as gears sing 

with practiced harmony, as the memory 

of an oven sends the scent of bread 

praying to air, sky, heaven.

 

The Sunday before, I visited 

a little church, knowing only the couple 

who invited me but not their language. 

All the congregation kissed 

my gringa cheek in greeting as they entered. 

I waited for the six guitars to begin their praise, 

my face raw with buenos días. 

Just before the music began, 

a woman with a box of grape juice in her hand 

and worry on her face, asked me a question 

I could not unravel the words to. 

Yet I knew what she asked. 

Sí, I answered—to belief. 

To eating the bread and drinking the blood. 

Yes to remembering a body beyond myself. 

 

The funicular stubs to a stop. 

We passengers look anywhere but into 

each other’s eyes. Maybe one minute passed, 

yet all of time has broken open among us. 

The plastic bread bags rustle, announcing 

the end of this brief service. 

 

The door rattles open. We arrive 

to El Museo de Cielo Abierto. 

Choose your translation: the Museum of 

Open air? Open sky? Open heaven?

Here, the walls, the streets, the stairs

are covered in murals dark and light,

dull and bright. A sleeping dog 

and a stack of pink trash bags watch

over the entrance to this steep place,

filled with every art—to this steep life,

the Museum of Open Heaven. 

[This poem appears in the anthology, Thin Places & Sacred Places]