Pots beside the harbour wall

An original literary non-fiction-style account of watching a small fishing crew sort empty pots after returning to harbour.

By the time I reached the quay, the boat was already tied up. Two crew members were lifting pots onto the deck in a sequence which seemed to have begun long before I arrived. A third sat on a low box and examined a length of rope. Beside the harbour wall, visitors watched for something which could be called a catch.

A man near me asked whether they had brought much back. One crew member named a few things I could not hear clearly above the engine. The visitor nodded, then said it looked like a quiet day. The person checking the rope smiled without stopping. An empty pot was set beside her foot, and she turned it to inspect one corner.

The work kept producing actions which did not look like results. A loose line was gathered, a label replaced, one pot moved from the first stack to another. When a boy asked why it had changed piles, the crew member said it needed more attention before it went out again. His father looked at the same corner she had checked and said that he would never have noticed it.

Across the deck, a bucket tipped and water spread towards a drain. One person reached for it while another moved a bag away. The response was brief enough to disappear into the larger routine. A passing tourist raised a camera only when a gull landed on the boat’s name. The bird supplied a neat picture which the sorting work had not.

Later, the engine stopped. The two stacks of pots remained different, although their difference was not obvious from the quay. The crew member coiled the inspected rope and put it beside the smaller stack. Someone asked when they would go out next. She looked towards the harbour entrance and said they still had work to finish here first.

What do you learn from the whole passage about the crew’s work after returning to harbour?