Through a Glass Darkly

In their projected restoration, contractors 
pulled down aging plywood, discreetly 
placed to hide remnants of the stained-glass 
window shattered in the fifties by a bevy 
of jets too low in passing, their sonic 
droppings witnessed in the crystal face 
of shops cracked the length of town. 
The choice, now forty years more ecumenical, 
was not to reproduce the common icons 
of the faith—Joseph kneeling, 
angel, trumpet. 
The glassmaster has lifted, in their place, 
his abstraction of the very world that holds 
this Sunday hall: high desert landscape starkly done
in yellows, gold, umber; shades of sagebrush drab 
and pifion green; a distant white. 
Geology of mesa, canyon; flats left open 
to an arch of variegated blue. Above, 
a didactic sunburst to reassure the congregation 
that Deity has graced their efforts among these arid
lands, that this day’s paths are clearly marked and sure. 

September mornings, early, sycamores outside 
this window urge foilage higher than the compass-
measured orb itself; alternately open for oblique rays
to touch the panes, then close to hold a quiet space for leaf-
shadows to project through this transparent text, speaking
darker tongues and clearer truths; 
shifting corners of life’s surface left unillumined, 
tomorrow’s promise faint and unfulfilled, desperation
as Sabbath search for mottled meanings of this House.
These walls, filled again with subtle hue, soft among
the absolutes of light and shade where the faithful labor
in wonder, undefined, between ocher stains of slow doubt
and carnelian thrust of pentecostal flames that dance,
glass-enhanced, across the heads of those that hope.