I thread a prayer with beads of feeling

… a meagre attempt at gratitude

for the luminous that brightens life itself

and I am but a poor reflective moon like at night,

when the humid air is pregnant with poetry,

and the dark thick glabrous leaves of Sisal

give me goosebumps.

I have you for my personal solarium

where you shine nothing but love,

that I now assign you gender

and place you in my pantheon of deities;

the only way I can exalt your luminous presence

by submitting to you my insignificance.

I know you burn an internal heat

slowly making your way to a little death

through millions of years before you go

from red giant to white dwarf.

They say you aren’t massive enough

and there will be no black hole in your wake.

Yet, despite the derisions,

you make the leaves glow green as I plant bougainvillea and Plumeria

in a light drenched garden,

while the farmer in Morogoro plants Cassava and tomatoes

And elsewhere in the world they see auroras…

But you shine on me all year and I feel special

for my thoughts are bright and nothing rains down my cheeks.

The paddy fields in Mbeya are busy capturing your photons

and the dukas in Kariakoo will soon be selling fragrant rice,

that will feed the poor and the rich alike.

And I know there are times when you feel low

like the heat simmering in rage beneath a dark spot on your skinless surface,

so they map and measure your cycles

and astrologers and astronomers swear by them,

as when all your magnetic storms conspire to send signals,

that NASA can see and I can feel,

for it warms my heart to be able to stand

bathed in your warm presence

on the fringe of a sandy beach

alongside the turquoise waters of Msasani bay.

And I miss you when it rains

or when your sometimes petulant magnetic flares

are so impulsive and reckless,

they blow out the grid.

I need not worry then,

for ever since Prometheus stole the fire from Zeus

I now know how to make one …

and I light a candle or sometimes an oil lamp

to imitate, to worship you one way or another

and banish the darkness.

.

.

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Gratitude to the radiant Sun while in warm, tropical Dar es Salaam