Sun-Flower

Dear God,
I am your sun-flower.
As you watch me carefully
I follow all your ways,
I bend across your sky,
from rise to setting
my growing thirsty head
drinks all your rays.
 
I am not an earthly plant
and Nights without you
last many earthly days
where even in earth’s morning
I would raise my face
until earth’s evening falls,
but inner darkness stays,
until I learn your constant course
and drop my heavy head
to feel your path beneath the world
whose Shadow makes our night
and soak the dew-soothed restfulness
of your invisible Light.
 
 Then always your dawn’s rays
touch each cell of waiting
with ever new return,
no words can celebrate your rising
or tell the power of growing Day
which draws life’s forces into consciousness
and lifts and swells the flower
for quite unearthly stay,
no dearth of light
through arctic circumstance
of many earthly nights.
 
Oh universal sun
if your sun-flower
can with upturned face
at least resemble you
follow you and return to you in seeds
your many riches
I will grow with the same thirst
that brings both bloom and heaviness.
 
Made by you and for you
I will submit to forces sent from you
from my rising to my setting
through embrace of earth below
toward a dawn I do not know
I will be your Sun-Flower   
 
                                                                                    (1970s  ?)