Life in a small town.

Its been a long hard winter, but today I heard a Curlew .They are back, haunting the hills with their strange cry. Not really a harbringer of spring, but a promise that it will arrive. A reminder to have faith.
The evocative cry, has inspired generations of poets and writers. They have tried to grasp its essence, they write about the memories it evokes rather than the sound it makes, like this from WB Yeats

O CURLEW, cry no more in the air,
Or only to the water in the West;
Because your crying brings to my mind
passion-dimmed eyes and long heavy hair
That was shaken out over my breast:
There is enough evil in the crying of wind.

Or the mood it engenders.

The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveler hastens toward the town ( Longfellow.)

Here is an attempt to put the sound of the cry into words by Jeremy Hooke.

The curve of its cry-
A sculpture
Of the long beak:
A cry carved from bone.

The words (my own) “A cry of lament from a lost soul,.” don't really mean anything , but is a fair attempt to get the feel of the thing, for it contains the essential elements of Other Worldliness , Loneliness and Self Pity, that I hear.

Part of its attraction is the dearth of birdsong up in these hills at this time of year, it is a real treat to the ears after four months of harsh crows, but that doesn't explain the effect on the listener. Burns discribes “an elevation of the soul” on hearing “the loud solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon.”.

I once asked a musician why certain music feels sad or uplifting or dreary, inspite of its tempo and volume. She said it was due to the key it is played in, (How strange the change from major to minor) for some reason different keys affect us differently they resonate with something inside us. The key the culew sings in unlocks a contemplation of things unseen and untouchable.

I'll leave the last words to William Butler Yeats..
. -I stumbled blind
Among the stones and thorn-trees, under morning light;
Until a curlew cried and in the luminous wind
A curlew answered; and suddenly thereupon I thought
That on the lonely height where all are in God's eye,
There cannot be, confusion of our sound forgot,d
A single soul that lacks a sweet crystalline cry.