Time shifts and slides
sometimes slow, sometimes fast,
sometimes black, sometimes white,
sometimes red
Nine short months a howling wilderness
in distance travelled, like a refugee,
waiting for something to happen,
a death or a birth
Dark frontiers must be crossed
and there is nothing written down,
no instructions,
nothing certain, nothing to show
You glimpse the future
then it darts back into hiding
and just when you think it will soon be over
you must travel to a new place
where there is no home
where there are people who may hate you
who wish you were not there:
papers to be signed
and you have no power
except the power within you
which seems so small
This poem was also part of the alternative carol service. I hope its relevance there is fairly obvious.