Hard Frost

I.

Hard frost and the marsh has stopped. Not frozen over, nothing so dramatic, just stopped, the way a clock stops: the water still there, the reeds still standing, the whole mechanism holding its last position.

The channel has a skin on it. A gull walks across a part of it and thinks better of the rest.

II.

This is the month the marsh gives nothing back. No heron. No boys on bikes. The council van does not come because there is nothing to write down that the cold has not already said.

I walk the wall anyway, out of habit, which is what a marsh mostly teaches: that turning up is the whole of the practice and the reward is not guaranteed and you do it in January too.

III.

Going home the light fails at half past three and everything goes the blue of a struck match, and for about ninety seconds the frozen channel holds the sky better than the sky does.

Then it is dark and the marsh is only a smell, salt and iron and the rot that means it is still alive, and I have my hands in my pockets like my grandfather and not one useful thought in my head, and that, this year, is what I have to offer.