Ordination Copyright © Jen Overett 2011

Reading by Florence Cox

As on all summer Sundays
I wore a pale cotton frock
Iron-crisp as rice paper,
Pink knees ready scabbed
Above white ankle socks,
Cheeks red and hot from knowing nothing,
Curlered hair like a mop.

This was my older cousin's day.
Once a gangly loner of a boy
(A couple of sweet girls had never lasted long),
Now a tall, thoughtful young man.
We'd left the church like a marriage party
And, if he had other pleasures,
Today they were not by his side.

Playing in a corner with the soft anguish of being alive,
I watched his mother (who knew most the absence of a bride
The pride she felt would have to do),
My handsome, widowed aunt,
Cake fancies on a plate in one hand,
Lift her eyes above the celebrations,
The room stand still for a moment.

Her son and his serious, complicated choice,
Her silent cry amongst the chatter "Where has it all gone?"
Before the scene resumed its muffled social form.
I grasped then a lesson from the world's dark to and fro,
How each adult bears it, how I too would learn
To lift, with time, my own sorrow,
And add it to the flow.