Stained Glass Windows

Imagine standing at an old wrought iron gate, rusted and partially open, beckoning you in. Beyond is a garden, winding around to the side and behind the massive ancient church to your left. Its stones look like they have been standing their patiently forever, watching the world as it passes them by. You step through the squeaky gate, along the garden, unkempt and overgrown, patches of thistles scattered amongst daffodils that looked like they flew in from the neighbor over the fence. The breeze softly rustles them, adding to the muted sounds of an organ coming from inside.

As you come around to the back corner, you see a small cemetery hiding behind, a few tilted tombstones fading in the sun. An angel with its wings covering its eyes leans over the largest of the stone slabs, protecting the inhabitant beneath from all who might defile it. The sun is diagonally opposite, on the other side of the church, and shines brightly right through two sets of stained glass windows, in the process dappling and refracting in a kaleidoscope of color. The gravestones take on a patchwork quilt appearance, each a collection of oddly shaped reds, greens and blues.

If only I could take that image in your mind, and visualize it for you, in a stunning panorama of each of the elements in perfect detail. Instead, all I have for you is a ghostly shadow of a play on words. Not the stained glass windows you were thinking of, but colored glass windows, soiled by splotches of dried mud thrown up by a virtual thunderstorm. The light shining from behind, illuminating the grubbiness as much as the windows, casting stained shadows on the ground, a tinge of their original colors projected horizontally.

Luckily your imaginations far exceed anything I could do, and you can even hear the chirp of the bright red cardinal as it sits on top of the angel's wingtip, searching for a juicy beetle or grasshopper in the long grass between the plots.