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know who you are.
    There’s a scuffle. The skill’s to time it right, to row out
    fast and shoot your net fast over the stern,
    a risky operation when you’re leaning out and the boat wobbles –
    I saw a man fallover the edge once:
    oo oo oooo …
    Our boat went under between the wharf and steamer quay.
    We’d got weights on board, more than you’re meant to
    and we were all three of us in the water. One drowned.
    It’s a long story, you’ve got to judge the tide
    You’ve got to judge the tide precisely, you draw a semicircle back to land.
    One man’s up there pulling the net in, knuckles to ground, so the catch doesn’t spill out under,
    which is hard work till it gets to the little eddy offshore and then the river gathers it in for you.
    You can see them in the bunt of the net torpedoing round.
    Sometimes a salmon’ll smack your arm a significant knock, so you pull it right up the mud.
    Some people would perceive it dangerous, but we know what we’re doing,
    even when it’s mud up to our thighs, we know the places where the dredger’s taken the sand away
    Foul black stuff, if you got out there you might well disappear
    and people do die in this river.
    Three men on an oystering expedition,
    the tide flowing in, the wind coming down,
    on a wide bit of the river.
    They filled the boat too full, they all drowned.
    Where are you going? Flat Owers . oyster gatherers
    Who ’ s Owers? Ours .
    A paddock of sand mid-river
    two hours either side of low water .

    Can I come over?
    All kinds of weather
    when the wind spins you round
    in your fish-tin boat with its four-stroke engine .
    Who lives here?
    Who dies here?
    Only oysters and often
    the quartertone quavers of an oyster-catcher .
    Keep awake ‚ keep listening .
    The tide comes in fast
    and after a while it
    looks like you ’ re standing on the water
    still turning and shaking your oyster bags .
    Already the sea taste
    wets and sways the world – what now?
    Now back to the river .
    Feel this rain .
    The only light ’ s
    the lichen tinselling the trees .
    And when it’s gone , Flat Owers
    is ours . We mouth our joy .
    Oysters , out of sight of sound .
    A million rippled
    life-masks of the river .
    I thought it was a corpse once when I had a seal in the net – huge – a sea lion.
    They go right up to the weir.
    They hang around by the catch waiting for a chance.
    That’s nothing – I almost caught a boat once.
    On an S-bend. Not a sound.
    Pitch dark, waiting for the net to fill, then
    BOOM BOOM BOOM – a pleasure boat

    with full disco comes flashing round the corner.
    What you call a panic bullet –
    ten seconds to get the net in,
    two poachers pulling like mad
    in slow motion strobe lights
    and one man, pissed, leans over the side and says
    hellooooooooooooo?
    But if you’re lucky, at the last knockings it’s a salmon with his
    great hard bony nose –
    you hit him with a napper and he goes on twitching in the boat
    asking for more, more to come, more salmon to come.
    But there aren’t many more these days. They get caught off
    Greenland in the monofilaments.
    That’s why we’re cut-throats on weekdays.
    We have been known to get a bit fisticuffs –
    boats have been sunk, nets set fire.
    Once I waited half an hour and
    hey what’s happening, some tosser’s poaching the stretch below me,
    so I leg it downriver and make a bailiff noise in the bushes
    And if you find a poacher’s net, you just get out your pocket knife and shred it like you were ripping his guts.
    whose side are you on?
    I’ve grown up on this river,
    I look after this river,
    what’s your business?
    beating the other boats to the best places:
    sandy pools up Sharpham where the salmon holds back to rub the sea-lice off his belly.
    He’ll hold back waiting for the pressure of water
    or maybe it’s been raining and washed oil off the roads or nitrates and God knows what else
    and he doesn’t like his impressions up the weir.

    Some days the river’s dark black – that’s the