Reedbed

I.

First light and the reedbed does its one trick, turning from grey to a colour with no name, the whole acre leaning the way the wind left it.

A heron stands in the channel. It has the patience of something that has never once been in a hurry, and I have the patience of a man who checked his phone on the way down.

II.

The dyke wall is failing in a slow, municipal way. Every winter takes a little more of the facing stone and every spring a man in a council van comes and looks at it and writes something down.

I like him. I like anyone whose job is to notice a thing getting worse and not pretend otherwise.

III.

The heron goes without appearing to decide to. One second it is a post, then it is a hinge, then it is weather moving off toward the sluice.

I stay. The light gets ordinary. Somewhere behind me the village starts its engines and the marsh does what it always does, which is not care, which is the thing I come down here to be taught again.