Second-rate Vendor    by Hugh Rance

Religion is like the roses sold you that do not last through dinner. Their once smell, like the lavender perfume of your mother and the hay musk of your father, can be returned to only in memory. For a while you pretend to pretend that the flowers have not bent heads down as the chill, which stiffened them, thaws. The guest chatter and leave with their gaiety. Curiously you pull at a bud that is limply unopened. Petals come away. The seedless core is rudely exposed. You are grown. That flower vendor will see you again, only as you pass. Neutral face, eyes blank, educatedly prim, you see the flowers offered. They look bright in the sun that passes though the glass. So, though a solid illumination can pass. And now in the reflection in the glass is you getting on with your life.  [go back]