Why write into the void?

I think I mentioned before that I've been doing Granta's course on Nature Writing. Each week, we've been looking at aspect of our own practice as writers, building on skills and adding tools and ways to approach our work. I'll share some more of the writing from the course over the next few weeks, but this piece was pressing.

Last week, the fifth week of the process, we were considering what it was that moves us to write, whether about nature specifically or in general. My mind was overwhelmed by a series of messages and posts that pulled people I care for into the abrupt tumult of war. This is the poem that came from that:

The Lined Page

Stay away from windows, the message said.
I gave her daughters my Star Wars figures.
Now they and her defiant husband hide.
Her last post spoke of the deep jolt
As missiles erupted the towers in the sand,
Of air becoming flame, transmuting hope to glass.

I forgot to close the curtains again and wake
To the glitter and drift of dust spirals as I lift
My phone to search for word, but no.
On Signal, an exile speaks of fleeting joy.
Of streets singing the tyrant’s death.
Then comes the dread. The “next” question.

After letters to politicians, porridge, I write poems.
Send the exile cat photos and stories of sheep.
We exchange gifs and then we toll the dead.
Entire movements murdered and monsters martyred.
I can feel the privilege of being able to look away
To sleep and even wake without annihilation.

Why trace in ink these fading lines of hope?
I watch a chaldro peck and hop in sea foam.
The dead seal cub on the beach is hollow.
A selkie mother keens from her hottest core.
“You are a brother,” the exile says.
“As you see my pain, I read your peace.”

The page splits with drafts, torn through.
A philosopher once asked: If you think
You’re an individual, what do you breathe?
We are porous things, defying borders.
We write no line between us and nature.
Between bird and beach, life and next.