If you think your road is long and straight,
Or set in stone, or carved by fate,
You need more practice at the wheel
Your path to see, your way to feel.

The motorway may stretch before
Your polished windscreen, but no more
Does this your future journey know
Than tarot card or medium’s show.

For surely signs confuse sometimes
And from wrong exits new roads wind,
And lead to unimagined turns,
And roundabouts, and lessons learned.

And while you’re lost on some strange road,
A wild new landscape may unfold
Itself to old and jaded eyes,
Renew acquaintance with surprise.

Then sudden showers will block your view,
You’ll sit in snowdrifts, shivering, too,
And, broken down, you’ll find a phone,
And friends to aid your journey home.

You’ll read your maps from start to end,
Turn pages that you’d never bend
If all went well and roads were straight,
And set in stone, and carved by fate.

So never fear the long, straight way,
That seems to stretch to Judgement Day.
For this you can depend upon;
Roads never stay the same for long.