I imagine the man crunching
gears into reverse, side-swiping the bramble hedge then raising a wave of
gravel as he hurtles back into someone’s drive to let another car pass, had a
bad start to his day.
A row with his wife, the kids
playing up, the shock of an unpaid bill, perhaps his mother is ill, or just a
string of small exasperations over days or weeks that unravel now on this narrow
lane.
I understand how our lives can
sometimes buckle with the unexpected, the road we thought we knew suddenly
fraught with obstacles we are not equipped for.
‘Take a moment’ I wrote on the
cover of a journal at the beginning of the year. Some days it’s as if I have never
even heard those words. Others, I remember to breathe.
As I hope this man may be
doing now, before slipping quietly into first gear, the woman in the
passenger seat glancing sideways at him with a glimmer of light in her eyes as they slowly move forward.
salad fields
what's written
on the other side
of the sign
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