The two next poems about glass ...

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You cannot preach to glass
and all that drumming and
high harmony would surely
shatter such thin panes, even
on God's own home (built 
with human imperfection
of course, he'd understand.)

The balmy breezes lifted 
my fine hair, my secular
spirit, soothed the heat of
hundreds of passionate bodies
calling to God to take them
home, (and they didn't mean
back to the village and toil.)

Twenty-five years later I enter
the cathedral I remember as airy, 
joyous with shaker and drum, 
salvation, and voices uplifted 
as one. Memory's glassless spaces
have become solid brick walls. 
Hushed sanctum, but is it home?


National Gallery WaterWall

As a teenager I would stand close,
to cool heated limbs, reckless heart.

Inside, expressions of life to be
studied, understood, not to be
something I was perplexed by.

As a mother I restrained their small
hands from reaching into the water.

By then I knew about recycling
and imperfection, implications.
I knew about drowning & drought.

Now, older and wiser, I read the
blurb, ponder, re-read and wonder.

Where are the boundaries of art?
Why must one stare at moving water?

Inside, I rejoice in the opportunity
to discover what I cannot grasp,
and what there is to be perplexed by.