The air was damp
with silk-spun mist
draping itself over the still water.

The moorhen’s solitary salute
echoed across the shore,
as the dinghy rocked
our unsteady feet.

I felt small
within nature’s expansive dawn,
my father took my hand
and sat me in the bow,
a droplet of cold river
splashing my bare leg;
a treasured moment,
just me and him,
mother and brother still sleeping,
as his arms sliced the oars
through sky-mirrored water,
jelly-brown ripples sluicing the wooden sides,
a heron stiff as the reed,
black-beedy eye distianful, oblivious
of the plop of hook and fish
as we anchored in the Broad
in the frozen silence
of a black and white memory.