You Wanted Hawk Feathers
I told my parents I wanted a dream catcher.
They were in Arizona, travelling somewhere touristy.
Red Rock, Sedona, maybe even visiting the Navajo.
I didn’t expect anything real.
I half meant it, half didn’t.
I figured they’d bring back something plastic and colorful,
adorned with dyed feathers.
But they surprised me.
It was handsome - the perfect size.
Leather wrapped tight, beads small and earth-toned.
It didn’t feel cheap - it had substance.
It felt like someone’s hands had created it with purpose.
I loved it, except for the feathers.
I don’t know why I said it, but I did:
“Damn, I wish these had hawk feathers.”
It was just a throwaway thought.
It wasn’t a request.
Not too long after, my father knocked on the door
of my apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
No phone call first - just a knock.
He was holding a thin, crinkly plastic bag -
I think from Western Beef or C Town.
He handed it to me like it was just lunch or tools.
And in his Italian came,
“You wanted hawk feathers.”
That’s it. No “hello.” No, “How are you?”
But inside - Jesus!
Inside were hawk feathers -
Red Tail.
The whole bag - full of them.
Deep brown, creamy streaks and spots -
reddish ends, the color of old brick.
I asked where he got them, but I already knew.
He said it plainly in the first language I ever heard.
“Su par io.” - his old dialect.
Or “upstate” in English. From his land in Wallkill,
New York where he hunted.
Like it was no big thing.
Like delivering on a promise
that came from an innocent wish a loved one made -
as if it was simply something you did,
even if it meant a single shot bringing something wild down from the sky.
I know it was wrong.
I know Red Tails are protected, and it wasn’t his to take.
But that wasn’t how he thought.
My father wasn’t cruel - he was old-world.
You ask for a thing, and he gives it.
Maybe not the version you meant,
but the real thing - with blood on it.
With dirt still clinging.
He wasn’t thinking about laws or wildlife preservation.
He was thinking my son wanted hawk feathers - so here.
And in their presence,
and with them dangling,
I felt a truth -
a wild authenticity,
the kind of realness no souvenir could ever touch.
And in that bag,
my father
was wild as any bird.
Steven Visintainer is a New York poet and educator born in Brooklyn and raised on the Brooklyn-Queens border of Ridgewood, Queens, and now living on Long Island. An Italian American of Trentino ancestry and a graduate of Hunter College, CUNY, he is a writer whose work is rooted in memory, family history, heritage, working-class identity, and the raw architecture of New York City, past and present. Many of his poems grow from two worlds - the concrete of New York City, where he was born, and the landscape of his ancestral land in northern Italy.
Always seeking poetry in often overlooked places, he enjoys melding grit with beauty. Inspired by a wide range of artistic influences spanning architecture, cinema, music, painting, and sculpture, he is the author of the self-published collections Worth Remembering and Angels on the Sidelines: Poems Written During the Covid Seasons, and is currently preparing his third volume of poetry, A Fabulous Bewitching: New and Selected Poems.
His work has appeared in Spitball Magazine, the anthology This Uncommon Place, and he has been a frequent contributor to Bindle Zine, a Long Island quarterly featuring writers and artists. His poetry has also been read numerous times on the blog radio show Late Night Poets, which features poets from around the world.
