The View According to Mr. Tiffany

Stained glass windows, back-lit,
alive with saturated colors unlike anything in heaven or on earth.
A view from our world into his dreamscape—opalescent glass.
The children stand and stare at curled and delicate lines—Art Noveau.
They call “pretty,” twisting lead veining its way through molten glass.
Should I tell them the view will never be this pretty again?

Using the clouded glass, framing my life,
I try to count the number of times I’ve watched
President Kennedy’s head disintegrate,
the number of dead babies wrapped in plastic black,
to list the countless, shattered wrecks full of teenage flesh
on the six o’clock news—with no stained or painted glass to soften the spectacle.

On the way to work, to school, the world rushes past my dark and tinted windows,
abandoned shacks settle into dust, wildflowers struggle in tangles of litter,
derelict cars like the ribcages of slaughtered bison, scattered and weed choked,
hard lines cut by canker and indifference. Then in January, the ice storm,
and the stop sign fringed in Tiffany glass,
the car chassis on Avent Ferry dripping with crystal.
Every crippled ruin groans beneath the glittering fire of craft—of creation.
With the world remade in the image
of Louis Comfort Tiffany, I try to ignore the imminent thaw.