Frieda Hughes: A car crash gave me new perspective
When you’re forced to slow down, creative pursuits can bloom, writes poet Frieda Hughes. So why – now that Welsh speed limits have ground down from 30 to 20mph – am I feeling this impatient fury?
TRAVELLING COMPARISONS
More miles in a week mop up life, as if life was a spilt liquid to be wrung into a drain.
London, again, was a four-hour drive into dawn, and a seven-hour return
Three hours later, after unlocking a door for someone. A driver, texting, drifted,
Or missed a mirror-check on manoeuvring, and blocked the M40
Long enough for me to sketch two rabbits and an owl. If we’d done
Twenty miles in an hour it would have felt like progress, but not in Wales where I live;
Our old 30s became the new 20s last month, crippling the mind with impatient fury.
And then the dream: In my teenaged black Jag I came to a roadworks gantry,
The engines of diggers ground down the night as I drove beneath the bridge
Of scaffolding and lights. Suddenly, with workmen watching, I stood at the roadside
Staring down at the forklift tines that had shattered my windshield
And impaled the front seats. Sleepless at six a.m. I tried to block out the image
Over and over again, but it continued to repeat as if I wasn’t listening.
It was only as I described it to others that at last it made sense: I always think
That I can keep on going if I negotiate obstacles and work all hours, but now
I believe that if I step away from my life as I stepped away from that car
I’d gain perspective and see the crash coming in time. The phone rings
As I type this; the stranger is not selling anything – his bird-book writing
Friend in The Gambia read my article about me and my owls,
And since we both live in Wales, would I like to meet fifty-six vultures?