On seeing my own shadow against a fogbank.

Planting fan trained apple trees on a February night, because time had soaked away like too little rain and because of a warm window in a brutal spell, the tiredness and the cold started to take its toll. I looked up. Orion was hard overhead, potent and stalking. Headlights crawled on a distant road, occasionally painting the edges of the sedge by the drain. An animal barked in the fens, like great sparking irons grinding against each other. An owl answered. I looked up again. A bank of fog had rolled to the blackthorns at the field's edge. Against the fog, the cold shadow of a hulking man stood watching, staring back at me as I stared at him until the fog rolled over the fence and he disappeared.