"The Stained Glass Window" by Iris-Genevieve Lahens Esper

I want Promethean heat of summers
and the future stretching like a field with no fences.
I want dreams leaking into real time
turning darkness into a treasury of light.

I want to shut out the yammer and slam around us
gossip stretching its three necks
tongues humming like locusts
during the first Pharaonic plague.

I want to shape a space for calm
and stand knee-deep in Mendelssohn and Mozart
singing stained glass cantatas
under haloes of the moon.

I want to step out of windows
and drown in fire bursts of flowers
or strip the fuzz from the peach
and tongue the blush on the flesh below.

I want the feeling
that we're quite ourselves again
resilient as earth
and moving like snails in slow motion lust
deep in the expectations of love.

"Stained Glass Cantata" was previously published by three candles

Bio: Ruth Daigon was founder and editor of Poets On: for twenty years until it ceased publication. She won "The Eve of St. Agnes Award" (Negative Capability) 1993. Her poems have been widely published: Shenandoah, Negative Capability, Poet & Critic, Kansas Quarterly, Alaska Quarterly, Atlanta Review, Poet Lore, Tikkun, Prism, Green's Magazine....Internet "E" zines include Ariga, Crania, CrossConnect, Zuzu's Petals, Switched-On-Gutenberg, Poetry Cafe, Apples & Oranges, Moonshade, Gravity Bluepenny, Blue Moon.... also Poet-Of-The-Month on The University of Chile's Pares Cum Paribus (an "E" chapbook in English and Spanish) Web Del Sol (a chapbook of her work that appears permanently on the WEB). Her latest poetry collection is Between One Future And The Next (Papier-Mache Press) 1995. About A Year (Small Poetry Press in 1996), Her next poetry book Handfuls of Time (Small Poetry Press, Select Poets Series) has just appeared and a CD based on several of her books as well is in the offing.

Contact Ruth at ruthart@aol.com