Boy sits zigzagged on the riverbank
worn out trainers jiggling over rippling surface.
Tracksuit legs parallel daddy’s long legs,
between them rod and line a patient perpendicular.
He thinks of angles – angling –
the beaten obtuseness of grownups
their sharp reflexive answers
acutely narrowed horizons.

But here they soften by degrees
as the words cast out their lines –
of living in the woods off fire-smoked fish
a never going home time, a forever here time;
the man and the boy and the endless water
and the smoothing of the edges.