Frieda Hughes: The Road to Vultures

In her latest exclusive poetry column, Frieda Hughes takes us on a dazzling journey, surrounded by feathers and bird song...

‘Egyptian vultures strutted their whites right out of their hieroglyphs; feathered heads’ (Frieda Hughes)

The road lost its white line on a right turn, then it narrowed and bent. Gravel gathered

As it narrowed again. Verges disappeared into hedges where two strings of tarmac

Straddled a whole central fringe of an ecosystem. Gutters of broken stone

Became streams that ate away the road at both edges. I balanced 272 kilos

Of metal on two wheels, tightroping, further and further up into the hillside maze

With openings in forestry that exposed sunlit fields and the promise of arrival beyond.

But I was lost and had to be found, led up to the ridge where Horstmann Trust aviaries

Were hangers for the long swoop of Cape vultures that haggled dead chicks and half-rats

From each other, using beaks like hockey sticks; the slap of their wings against air

As loud as wet bedsheets being shaken from an upstairs window. They wore

Their cloaks of heavy feathers as if to blanket themselves against the chill of extinction.

A condor rested her head upon the knee of her beloved, and a white tailed sea eagle

Out-seagulled the seagull’s cry as if the same mother gave birth to both voices.

The hoodies, pink necks blushing with excitement, blue eyes bulging, congregated

Like expectant teenagers, waiting on their sky-planted perches for a chance to feed.

Egyptian vultures strutted their whites right out of their hieroglyphs; feathered heads

Whittled down at the beak to elegantly curled spikes delicately picked

At the offerings made them, their numbers elsewhere dwindling fast

Even as I stood and watched them there, gathered in the hope they’d breed.

I rode home in the darkening cold with a head full of feathers.

The Horstmann Trust: https://vultures.ngo/