CURLEW CALLING

What would you give for the call of a curlew?

They are leaving us.
Elegant and strong, straw legs long,
bent beaked, oatmeal flecked.
Melancholic tuning forks.
Another way of being.

Leaving us because
we gave them cash crop furrows,
a predation of foxes
and EU crows.

Not often a taxidermist weeps.
But, as she held the curvature of the earth,
beak bent from ancient evolution,

Feathers falling,
her fingers fumbled with glass eyes
black and bright as acid.

What would you give for the last call of the last curlew?

                                                                   John Fox