I have been thinking about the tenderness
of scavengers, about the vulture’s flat, gentle feet.
How the frozen body of the finch in my window well
was gone by morning, spared a crude garbage-bag shroud
by the righteousness of some animal
that will not hunt a living being, even to eat.
My own death was slower: I did not hit a window,
but succumbed to a creeping leprosy of spirit
that gradually rendered me numb and still,
bloodless, quiet. Lord, if you’d only been here.
None of my usual cures seemed to work.
Do God’s feathers also end at the neck? Can his bowels,
acidic with mercy, neutralize the bacteria
of decay? Bring him entrails, tendons, a broken heart—
he will not consume a beating one. I don’t know
where he sleeps or nests: only that when hope
lies bloated and stinking on the highway
I find him circling, just outside the edges of my vision.
When I spiral down into death, he follows.
I once believed I consumed Christ’s body each week.
But now, as I take the bread and water, I see
I had inverted the ancient miracle:
for here is Christ on wide black wings,
bending to kiss the carcass of my faith
and coming away with flesh in his mouth—
my sparrow’s fall not wasted, only changed
into life abundant,
abundant.
