Improbably iridescent, the Kingfisher pauses from its energetic darting. Fireball orange, treasure-island blue, ice white. A shimmering contradiction of colours, perched upon the red-rusted girders of the foot bridge.
Ice skins the waters of the stream which it spans. As they meander through winter-pallid sedge.
A keen wind whips into Oare Creek, from the Swale.
Setting the feathered heads, of dormant reeds, aflutter.
A knoll rises from the marsh. An island of lush green, in a sea of bleached beige. Creating a sheltered sun trap, beneath the foot bridge.
The Kingfisher and I bask in our pool of warmth. Listening to the song of the wind and chuckle of the brook. The bird ceaselessly darting its multicoloured head from side to side.
It dives. Flitting from bank to bank, in low, skimming, acrobatic flight. Its dazzling bright plumage magically melting, to my amazement, into this lanscape of wan vegetation and looking glass pools. The Kingfisher disappears from view, making toward the hamlet of Oare.
I follow, more sedately. Boots scrunching over the heavy hoar frost, which crowns the sea wall. Past the slumbering forms, of winterised boats.
The tide ebbs seaward.
Abandoning awhile the eclectically individualistic miscellany of craft, which the Hollowshore yard attracts.
Leaving a slender and serpentine rivulet of salt water, as a reminder of boundless summertime ocean horizons.
Water confined, for now, between banks of an unctious substance, not fully solid nor yet truly aqueous, East Coast Oooze.
On which a mud streaked Redshank forages, in the low winter sun.
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