By Inga Eissmann Buccella
Outside – Sitting motionless on the branch
She looked to take the perfect chance
To land way down below
Overlooking the brick patio
The young hawk stared at the little boy
But the boy – through the glass – played with a toy
Inside – father on the phone
wept and sounded sad and alone
When the man walked back in the room
it was sunlit and nearly half past noon
The boy wondered what his father had heard
as through the window, both gazed at the bird
With fringy feathers of rust and white
She, the hawk, full of grace and might
Pushed off the black iron garden fence
with a wingspan that was quite immense
The boy was then told that grandma was “lost”
and the warm room soon filled with frost
He would find her, there had to be something he could do
And anyway, wouldn’t she be looking for him too?
He was sure that he knew her happy place
And that grandma couldn’t vanish into space
The boy then searched under his favorite tree
and through a bed of flowers
Up until then, he’d thought that grandparents
had some special powers
When mother arrived home, she hugged and cradled him
By then the sun was setting and light was burning dim
At night his pillowcase was damp with tears
as he slept with all his doubts and fears
Coming down for breakfast he heard from the hall
on the phone again – that grandma wasn’t lost at all
Now he understood as he closely stood beside
that she wasn’t missing – but that she had died.
Running to the window, the boy sensed a flutter of a tail
Or was it a wing, a beak, or a creature’s nail?
Too young to remember his grandpa – only that he was tall
The boy had also heard that he too had died late in Fall.
Grandma believed in angels, and soon the boy began to find
soft, floating feathers of every shade, and of every kind.
He would forever miss his grandma
but deep in Autumn he then began to see
Not one, but two strong red-tailed hawks
perched high on a branch of his favorite tree.
Growing up Inga Eissmann Buccella wrote poetry and sketched. But those interests lay dormant until about a decade ago.
As an adult she has been a tutor of children, student of interior design and architecture, and most recently, book author and illustrator. She continues to write poetry weekly.
Of the six stories Inga has written, four are children’s books surrounding animal characters. She believes that every animal has a story to tell. Sometimes, she will try to tell it through illustration. Other times, through words.
Both her “In the Age of Buoyancy” novella, and “Forever Feathers” touch on the inevitable and fragile connection between the natural and spiritual, which is all too often, most fragile.
You can view Inga’s illustrated work at www.etsy.com/shop/TheDrawingRoombyInga & www.etsy.com/shop/Pupspressions. Follow her on Instagram at Ingaeissbucc and on Facebook at Pupspressions. You can read her written work on her blog: www.wordstodrawon.com.