Stained-glass window

Words are
Those funny things we use
To describe those other funny things
We never really get to wrap our minds around

So we wrap them in words instead
As if talking in circles around something or
Writing it inside a box
Could somehow help a person get closer to
The Thing Itself

But it seems to me that the talking and
The writing do quite a different thing entirely
Building walls and sometimes
If we are lucky
They have windows through which we can see the thing
But not doors

And when you put them together
It's as if everyone's words
Were all tiny pieces of scrap metal and bits
Of colored glass and concrete and mortar
And they piled up on top of eachother
Haphazardly like life
Making the strangest stained-glass window
You've ever seen

And on the other side of the window was
The Thing Itself
Blurry and distorted through all our
Rainbow-hued shards of glass
And if you looked at it through a piece of metal
Or mortar or concrete
Of course you wouldn't see it at all

In fact, if you never changed your perspective
You might even think
It didn't exist in the first place

- ch 2004.08.18