...Upon Reflection...

It was a distinctive thump. 

Something that we 

as a singular family ear 

had grown    attuned to. 

The sound of a delicately padded 

object of mere ounces 

striking a large pane of glass. 

Distinct and yet 

only one room away, 

it registered as if at 

no more than a mere 

few inches   distant. 

 

We at the kitchen table 

on a Sunday morn, 

with death there 

at our pane of pain. 

 

And we'd rise to gather outside, 

there standing at the base 

of a large picture window to 

cast our eyes about the ground 

in search of death's   aftermath. 

 

And there it would be: 

a finch, 

a nuthatch, a wren, 

a common house sparrow. 

Some small woodland bird 

lying there with neck broken. 

Oh, and it would 

never fail to bring 

a well of tears to the eye. 

 

There was many a time 

I would pass into the living room 

to find my father 

silhouetted in that picture window. 

He darkly defined with that 

vista of woods beyond. 

Oh, and not just any woods mind you. 

No, those were   his woods out there, 

and yet...      

no more. 

 

I am certain my father 

always meant to die 

gazing out that window. 

That at the moment of death, 

his soul might rise, and 

there the most obvious exit, 

to pass outward through that 

cherished frame. 

Indeed, there to find solace 

amidst flitting birds as cherubim 

beneath a shimmering cathedral of trees. 

 

This he was denied, but 

whoever gets to choose 

their own death without 

the taste of metal in their mouth? 

We inevitably arrive at an age 

when that option comes 

    and goes. 

When you are no longer you. 

When you come to exist 

   in the third person. 

Bodily in mass yet 

   intangible. 

 

"We must do what's best for dad. 

It's really for his own good." 

He, father as child. 

 

He dies so many miles away. 

His last glimpse of nature 

a field of harvested corn stalks—

the stubbled earth 

of someone else's land. 

And not 

   a bird 

       in site. 

 

Oh, I'd like to think that  

that god he did not believe in 

might have sent him 

a singular black crow 

to transit his featureless sky. 

Would such a gift 

have been proof enough? 

 

Were there a chance that my father 

   possessed a soul, 

there at the moment of his death, 

I see it rise above body   

and take wing. 

 

There now flitting. 

There now darting. 

There now soaring, but... 

   with direction.

For you see,   he 

                              is going home. 

 

There now, 

passing through his woods. 

His woods. 

There now, his house, and 

upon it, a large pane of glass. 

 

He as a small bird, 

winging its way toward the 

devastating beauty it 

perceives in nature’s reflection. 

 

And there he dies. 

Truly dies. 

There    beneath that window. 

 

My father is herewith 

   forever passing 

through picture windows, 

he upon wing 

towards his own 

divine version  

                   of heaven. 

 

Ó2012 Jack Hubbell