If you take the way the grass is now and accept it as being dead and yellowed well there is nothing lost.

I mean to say acceptance is everything.

Look it is beautiful. Yellow grass in December holds promise. You only want to see it.

Most people might say it is indeed dead but beneath the yellow the tiny green shoots are preparing to appear.

Gorse turns too. There is nothing better than gorse.

It is what we are about. All this changing.

You wonder over the chickens. Don't. They too will begin their laying.

And brown eggs stained with chicken shit and straw will come, rich and warm in your palm.

And the day will lengthen too. Watch for it through the ash tree beyond the glass and know you will have to close the venetian blind when you bake the bread.

Flour dustings on the ancient floor boards but no matter, one wipe cleans it all away and fresh sweet smelling bread cools on the counter top.

New days will come and what they bring we do not know. Yet.

New clothes line days too and days full of pleasant surprises and the rotten, horrible days when you sit by the window and see nothing until a moment of clarity, like a break in the clouds comes and serves as a small token of what life is about.

Nothing much really.

It could be a son home from Rugby training, hungry, dirty and strong. A dog with brown eyes etched on your back. A table with a bowl of salad glistening in the candle light. A tossed napkin with your saliva resting on an empty plate. Nothing really but everything when you choose to see it.

And only in that moment the year might unravel like a stretch of wool, smooth on thin fingers and a year before and a year to come all meld with nothing only knots to make you stop and possibly count the stitches dropped, the intricate patterns woven into dreams.