A hope-filled poem by Katherine Venn, referencing the slowness that exists before a major change in one’s life. Illustration by Silvia Stecher.

You’re used to slowness, how most things take their time to shift
from one thing to the next: the way leaves emerge like mist
round trees, unfold into magnificence, then fade and fall,
and gently drift against the mossed garden wall;

the way life gathers shades and textures to itself,
the slow accretions, like dust settling on a bookshelf,
or water collecting, after each soft rain, in a water butt,
the way things drip and pool, spread slowly, silt up;

but sometimes things are different. It’s as if an ocean liner
had sailed right down your street and brassily come to harbour
outside your front door, and holds there, waiting, the sound of faint
music spilling from its deck, your face all astonishment

that this is here to take you beyond what you thought you knew,
delivering the horizon, a gift, to you.

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