From above, the lake seems a kind of paradise, 
the breeding ground of many migratory birds. 
Already, flocks dot the shore. Yet the water teems 
with hundreds of fallen birds looking for a place 
to stretch and preen. 

Those lured by the mirror of the lake’s red water, 
so bright it’s visible from space, will die in this 
runoff from the volcano, Ol Doinyo Lengai. 
Their feathers harden into clumps of brittle string, 
flattened winter weeds. Their wings lie heavy, 
will never feel the touch of air again. 

The hollow reeds that were their legs stuck fast 
in silt, the boiling water thick as blood, 
a bitter brew that turned them all to salt. 

—After a photograph by Nick Brandt:

B&W photograph (2013) of calcified flamingo
in Tanzania’s Lake Natron by Nick Brandt

Copyrighted © by Nick Brandt. All rights reserved.
Image appears here with his permission.

Publisher’s Note:

Image above is featured in the article by Joseph Stromberg in Smithsonian Magazine (2 October 2013): This Alkaline African Lake Turns Animals into Stone (“Photographer Nick Brandt captures haunting images of calcified animals, preserved by the extreme waters of Tanzania’s Lake Natron”).

Nick Brandt

(born 1964) is a photographer who was born and raised in the United Kingdom and moved to California in 1992. His work focuses on the impact of environmental destruction and climate breakdown, not only for some of the most vulnerable people across the planet but also for the animal and natural world. He is the creator of four photographic essay series: On This Earth, a Shadow Falls Across the Ravaged Land (2001-2012); Inherit the Dust (2016); This Empty World (2019); and The Day May Break (2021-2024), all of which are also available in book form.

In 2010, Brandt co-founded with conservationist Richard Bonham the Big Life Foundation, whose 350+ rangers patrol and protect 1.6 million acres of the Amboseli/Kilimanjaro ecosystem that straddles Kenya and Tanzania in East Africa.

Learn more at Wikipedia and at the Artist’s website:
https://www.nickbrandt.com/

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Nick Brandt: Elegies on the Sixth Extinction by Alisdair Foster in Talking Pictures: Interviews with Photographers Around the World (19 November 2022)

Robbi Nester

lives and writes in Southern California, where she is a retired college educator and an elected member of the Academy of American Poets. She hosts two virtual poetry series each month and is the author of four published books of poetry, including an ekphrastic chapbook, Balance (White Violet, 2012), and three collections: Narrow Bridge (Main Street Rag, 2019), Other-Wise (Kelsay, 2017), and A Likely Story (Moon Tide, 2014).

Her poems, reviews, essays, and articles have appeared widely in journals and anthologies, including among others: Artemis; Book of Matches; Cultural Daily; Dear Vaccine: Global Voices Speak to the Pandemic (Kent State University Press, 2022); SMEOP (Hot) (Black Sunflowers Poetry Press, forthcoming); Live Encounters; MacQueen’s Quinterly; Mindfull; Naugatuck River Review; Rhino; One Art; The Journal of Radical Wonder; Tiferet; Valparaiso Poetry Journal; Verse-Virtual; and Zooanthology: About the Animals in Our Lives (Sweetycat Press, 2022).

Robbi has also edited three anthologies: The Liberal Media Made Me Do It! (Nine Toes, 2014); Over the Moon: Birds, Beasts, and Trees, which was published as a special issue of Poemeleon Journal; and The Plague Papers, published online at Poemeleon Journal.

Poet’s website: www.robbinester.net

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Dancing White Egret, ekphrastic poem by Robbi Nester after a photograph by Philippe Rouyer, in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 14, August 2022); nominated by MacQ for Best of the Net 2024.

⚡ After Blossom, ekphrastic poem after an etching by Phil Greenwood in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 3, May 2020); nominated by MacQ for Best of the Net 2020, and selected as a Poetry Finalist.

⚡ In Memory, five poems by Robbi Nester in Live Encounters (August 2021)

⚡ Three Poems in Verse-Virtual (January 2020)

⚡ Law of Attraction, ekphrastic poem after Van Gogh’s Starry Night Over the Rhone, in Verse-Virtual (May 2019)

⚡ Night Tunnel, ekphrastic poem after a painting by Robert Rhodes, Philadelphia Night Train, in The Ekphrastic Review (21 April 2016)