Haibun: What's written on the other side of the sign



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

Comments

You write with keen imagination and with heart. Loads of both :)
Lynne Rees said…
Thanks so much :)))