Flour Invocation

As if flour had been flung
onto a gas flame,
all the words
we have ever uses for God
are in the air,
and the air is on fire.

The birds
are alight and falling
to earth now. Earlier
I saw a robin on the sidewalk,
still smoldering, still singing
praise.

I brought it inside
and tended it as it died,
then set to work transcribing
the hymns of combustion
it gave me as it coughed
and choked.

Who but a crazy man
sits inside writing of God
on a Saturday night
surrounded with the smell
of burning bread
and feathers?

Who indeed,
I ask myself, invoking
sacrificed birds
while the earth piles deep
with bodies. But this is how
I pray in these last days: inside, silently —

but I keep a bag of flour
near the stove in case
the silent words ever become
too oppresive to bear.
I know this can kill me.
I know it will be

a horrible way to offer myself to God
but when I do, at least
I will fly up singing
and fall back
in light
and heat.