The things of winter lurch into your path.

Some branches paw agog the space that’s grown

an emptiness between them. Foxes sniff

the fibreglass on undersides of cars,

a knife of wind in either nostril, limbs

about to clutch into a scrabbled exit.

The air is only cooling, can’t quite get

cool. There aren’t the peals of bells beyond.

Again, I’m looking through a bay window

at the outside of a window set 

into the same wall. To be clear,

the bay protrudes enough for me to see

back into the room in which I sit

ignoring the foxes, the lack of the sound of bells.