Beyond Walberswick

Written in response to Crispina’s
Crimson’s Creative Challenge.
Here’s my take.

The ferryman’s cottage stood empty, as it had every winter since old Arthur passed. They said he’d rowed that crossing for forty years, shepherding artists with their easels, children with fishing nets, lovers stealing away to the marshes.

I watched the tide recede, exposing the mudflats where his boat once scraped ashore. The orange roof tiles glowed against the darkening wood, and I imagined him there on autumn evenings, lamp-lit windows reflecting on the water.

Someone had shuttered it tight now, preserving it like a museum piece. But preservation isn’t the same as living. The benches sat waiting for passengers who’d never come, the warning sign swaying uselessly in the wind.

Perhaps that’s the agreement we make with places like this …. that they’ll outlast us, patient and shuttered, holding a space for our memories.

NAR©2026

This is “Don’t Pay the Ferryman” by Chris de Burgh

Crimson’s Creative Challenge #073

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