Saturday, March 12, 2011

To my studiomates, who love Chartres Cathedral as I do:

Amazing how tired you get of people and projects,
school and studio
Sitting between two blank white walls with ribbon windows,
fat plastic shades, cheap and broken.

You’ve spent too many late nights in this prison room
peering at your computer screen, connecting lines,
catching occasional glimpses
of the dingy Doubletree across the street,

flat and red,
with windows punched into walls
of perfectly modeled, even lines,
thoughtless repetition.

You hear the professor’s badgering,
think of work not done,
crumble under the weight of deadlines,
marvel at the fragility of inspiration--

like a pane of tinted glass
beautiful and bright casts shimmering rays,
painting your brain in color until
it cracks, shatters, under solid stress.

Think of cathedral glass, exquisite blues and reds
and turn to Chartres
soaring buttresses, branched arches, ribbed vaults
Rose window of pieced glass;

intricate figures, brilliant patterns,
composed like music, singing vibrant songs,
echoing in colored reflections,
illuminating the walls in a thousand hues.