The Lost Words

"Little astronaut, where have you gone, and how is your song still torrenting on?" This is the start of the Lark spell from The Lost Words, by Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane, which weaves spells around the nature words that have been lost from children's vocabularies; anyone who knows the skylark will understand how completely this question captures it. There's currently an exhibition on at Inverleith House which displays the spells from the book, each with an artwork showing the animal or plant missing from its environment, a gold icon representation of it, and then a picture of it restored to the habitat. Truly stunning. The missing Wren's song was perfect and the Starling spell beautiful. Lost (for) Words.