Cold Spring

The first daffodils in a vase on the kitchen table, bought yesterday on the market, the yellow of petal now beginning to emerge slowly slowly from the fine brown tissue sheath enclosing the bud.

Outside it is windy and foggy, something I used to think a contradiction, but which happens relatively often up here, and so cold again, eye-watering and nose-dripping as I walked down the field this afternoon, with sleet and even snow forecast over the weekend and into next week. As I write and it grows dark, the fog seems to be closing in bluish grey, the distant shapes of the tops gone, the nearest stand of trees just a dark tangle.