The Echo

an ekphrastic poem

"The Echo" by Ellen Thesleff, 1891.

The rose-gold world 
resounds with end 
of day gladness:

sky stretched canvas
tautly waiting 
for calling crows, 

starlings winging
home to their roosts,
robin redbreasts

serenading.
The grass’s green 
a-glimmer with gilt.

Sentinel trees 
darken their cloaks,
looming, shoulder 

to shoulder, black 
and grey shadows
ringing the field. 

Sun-warmed field where
She, unaware 
that she glows gold 

and pink, caught now 
in this moment 
between day's death

and night's dark-birth,
brandishes her 
silvered stick-stave.

She calls out, full- 
voiced, into the 
bird-haunted dusk, 

joining her song 
to the twilight
chorus. Now let
the echoes come.

---

A revision of a poem I originally wrote in 2020.

The girl in this painting could be a portrait of my oldest daughter, often seen at this age with stick in hand, lover of birds, singer of songs, utterly unselfconscious.

This poem is a tribute to B, my little chickadee who turned twenty this week.