Stained Glass

Fifteen... yeah
Fifteen years
Still your chains

And I walked
Across a campus
One cyan day

But there were stars
Stars in that sky
And a dancing fey

Re-wrote my life
And only then
Blue-eyed nymph

Your spell broke
Like stained glass
Freeing saints

And I turned
To the Stargirl's
Unequaled Light

This is a new poem from 2026, written to link the old collections of poetry, this first relationship in the poet's life covered in First Love, to Tome of Stars, itself. Just as the song narrates, for fifteen years he was still committed in heart to the "blue-eyed nymph," until a power far, far greater descended from the heavens and "rewrote his life."

The poem is minimalist and the musical version intentionally so as well. The poet simply states the facts: "15 years still your chains." He goes about his daily life, one day of a week of a month of a year for fifteen years. It is a "cyan" day, not because it is sunny, but symbolically, the color tied to the nymph (her startling eyes of blue repeatedly appearing in the verse in this album). It signifies his reality is still shaped by his emotional ties to her, no matter what else is happening around him or the choices he makes (career, "walked across a campus", self-and-other-betraying attempts to be normal and have a family, etc).

But this day is a life rupture: "But there were Stars. Stars in that sky." The dominating essence of his reality for the first time in fifteen years is overwhelmed by another reality. One that is more powerful, breaking through that "cyan sky".

Of course, in none of Stargazer's later poetry do stars show up haphazardly. And the next line is "And a dancing Fey." The stars come with the dancing Stargirl, "fey" a term to place her also in the magical world that he cannot understand or control and which has power over him (like the "blue-eyed" nymph). This calls back to a lot of verse in Tome of Stars painting the Stargirl in transcendent tones, even with identical terms in some poems, e.g., Smile:

She lit the underground, a grinning fey,
Transforming shadowed corners with starshine.

And immediately, the poem declares the fey "rewrote my life." This calls back to the First Sight and Starstruck poems, where the day the poet first became aware of the Stargirl, he was immediately impacted and altered.

In this case, the poem is showing a powerful and immediate transition. Fifteen years of "cyan skies" shatters like "stained glass" "freeing saints." This is imagery from the poet's many years in religious houses of worship where saints are frozen in colored glass for the faithful to see. He never realized until this verse came out of him that he harbored some sort of sense of imprisonment from it all.

Thus the hold his first love had on him was unmade as her "spell broke." But the poet is not really freed. In fact, he is now bound even deeper to another as he "turns to the Stargirl's unequaled light."

Psychoanalyze away. Product of maternal abuse? Random aspects of brain wiring? Nature and anti-nurture synergy? Whatever. This is the kind of person he is, a deep programming that therapists, time, life experience, prayers, psychedelic drugs, and self-delusion could not and cannot alter.

This poem acts as the bridge from one long chapter of his life to another. Very likely, barring another miracle, the last chapter of his life, ironically, lived similarly because of his and his beloved's flaws, much like that of First Love: longing, chained, and powerless, yet knowing a strength in accepting one's nature, even as it destroys you and renders one's life and its meaning to "diamond dust."