The other day we walked Sam up the road to Granny’s house. It's a ruin, actually, a roofless husk of stone and wood surrounded by apple trees, sold off a decade ago to Grace Jones’s tour manager. From this aerie we could see the town and surrounding hills, smothered in snow. The spruce plantation glowed red in the dusky light.

Excited, Sam bounced up and down the boreen. “Watch cats, dogs, insects as they walk around: they behave a lot like the human mind,” writes the poet Denise Levertov. Sam shuffles, dances, beelines from thing to thing, nosing, curious, distractable, ever seeking that edible tidbit or strange creature.

The snow disappears overnight. Town and country shed their hoary pelts. I notice the green shoots of daffodils, rising in the lawn surrounding the star fort. An emerald inkling of change underfoot, of vernal time to come.

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