"Stars at Noon" by David Middleton

Throughout the dawn they vanish one by one,
Those stars that still proclaim the ancient night,
Screened off by blinding rays of our own sun
Which brings the day's blue dome of air and light.

And in that dome the mind has come to know
Each creature made and stationed in its place
By Him who left us shepherds long ago
Of all His meadowlands of time and space.

Magnolias holding huge white blooming moons,
Pelicans scooping minnows from the tides,
Sunflowers climbing high in cloudless noons
Or bowing while the twilight still abides:

Such palpable abstractions as they fare -
The gleaming things, the brazen shapes ablaze -
Grow holy and beholden unaware
Of those galactic pastures where they graze.

And when, beyond the darkness and the stars -
Those primal givens riven from the One -
We find the great foundation nothing mars
In that First Cause who willed each brilliant sun

Then deep within the heavens' stellar wells
We sense a love whose overflowing glow
Still claims us when we gaze toward where it dwells
And matter seems no longer all we know

Just as the stars at noon are ever there,
Remembered and expected, though unseen,
Flaring against the darkness they declare
As like themselves, a part of what they mean