On an unseen cue, the plum at our bedroom window is coming into flower. It is early. Spring is still a fortnight away, but little good does it for me to nag at the open window. The plum knows something I don't and will never know.

But I feel the unwintering sun stronger on my shoulders each morning, building inexorably towards the new season. That is a little ominous for August, though the wind is still cold. What will it be like in October, when the first curlicues of smoke arise from dry bushland?

As usual, I turn to Mr Larkin to express what I cannot. This one is from an early volume called The North Ship.

The Trees

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again?
And we grow old? No they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.