In Cumbria, UK, iambic whistle of spring 
or staccato wild tweets proclaiming arrival. 

						   But now, 
just one lonely curlew calling 
across the inland fields, 
						   no call 
and response, 
no choir of winged throats 
					  with notes of exclamation 

plunging and soaring beyond 
lakes. Listen to what isn’t sung 

						 on the dead air 

You can’t love something 
that isn’t there 

						 silence 

is the dirge 
composed below clouds 
					 inaction begetting absence 

the final noisy flight 
we chose by doing 

					        		nothing 

Last Light (2024, photograph)
Design by Karen Elias, image of curlew by Freepik.
Copyrighted © by Karen Elias. All rights reserved.
Photograph appears here with artist’s permission.

*Publisher’s Notes:

1. From the article “‘You can’t love something that isn’t there’: readers on how the sounds of nature have changed around them” by Phoebe Weston in The Guardian (22 April 2024); link retrieved on 22 August 2024.

2. Creating visual art in response to poetry or other forms of writing is called etymphrasis, a term coined by artist, writer, and educator Jane Edberg. To learn more, see Kendall Johnson’s interview of Edberg and John Brantingham, whose book My Dead presents Brantingham’s poetry and Edberg’s artwork in response, in Issue 19 of MacQueen’s Quinterly: Art and Writing in This Age of Isolation... (August 2023).

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