A Prayer in the Dark

You speak to me at 3:00 AM when it is too quiet to ignore you.
Something outside of me – and yet nearer to me than my bones.
My life is a leaf stirred by the wind of your breath --
               I go as you direct
               A creature not of doing but of seeing.

You are the potter and I am the clay.
You pound me none too gently into the shape of your choosing --
And yet none too harshly either
               I being fashioned from unyielding material.

But we do yield, all of us,
Some are better, some are worse,
Some superbly formed --
               And some grotesque

               Some seeing at least dim glimpses of our destinies
               And some caught in the hell that is merely the reflection of ourselves
                              The cold
                                             dark
                                                            complicated emptiness
                              That is the illusion of the self-creating man.

Thus I am made by your hand
A shadow of your will
                                             unsuited to know the grandeur than has cast it
               And yet
               By your very being I exist
                              As a blade of grass among the millions that all turneth toward the sun
                              Their roots in the clay
                              They grow by their inmost nature toward the sky

               They sayeth
                              in discordant
                              and excruciating longing

               “Make me not in vain
               Oh Lord
                              Make me not entirely in vain.”