Ululations break the night –

Primal lows meandering over marsh:
The voices of creatures curious and lost,
Alien to these muddy shores.

Spectral under first-light obscurity,
The estuary’s fog swathes those beasts,
Slick hulks rippling the dark water
With trailing wakes of brackish grime.

Bank side, a lonely smudge stands sentinel,
Helpless to heed the low mourning song
Trembling across the fen.

These wearisome keens are muted in murk

And all sound is swallowed
By the rallying dawn.