It was last year. The fog had carpeted fields
in its breath, swamped crowns of trees
and reduced hedgerows to hedges.

Two tractors I saw were glazed in frost.
The streams frozen. Silent. You could feel
a cold earth, hard and solid as steel.

There are times when I accept this darkness, amble
blindly through years beneath a blurred moon
warped upon a night sky without a single star.

So I picture that honeyed glow of home,
like some beacon throbbing in the fog,
a lone wink of candlelight burning against the odds.