Creation of Stained Glass

The first stained glass was sunlight
bright shining through the trees,
broad flat
overlapped
hot petals and sour leaves.

The demarkation of light
and shadow made lines as crisp
as lead
but fluid
and limply mutable.

Colors bright as that famed fruit
whose flavour first made folk say
this is
a private
moment, when everything is

alive with savor and portents,
purpose and sensation,
the light
makes urgent
more than at any other time.

Millennia before glass,
before geometry,
logic,
men’s fires,
cultivation’s mysteries;

before St. Patrick’s shamrock,
before Venn diagram’s
shadow
faint between
two brights, the meaning of three

was there to see — apricot
gold, mango orange frame between
the two
a spearhead
shadow bold as bittersweet.