The mist comes rolling in from the sea and settles in perfect drops on your face. Hear how the sparrows sing in the cold morning and the branches of naked trees are bearing hope as a sisterly smile. It is January, wet sandy bottom of the year, frost everywhere and hard faces.

Something is alive in us still, but it has slept all winter like a bed of flowers, like pansies, pale-yellow, black, and both, with their strange little flower-faces staring at the sun, grumpy, contorted faces, some of them turned about on their stem, like little people looking over their shoulder with ineffable discontent waiting for someone who isn’t coming.