O beautiful child, rise within me.
Show me how to laugh and live.
There is a beautiful child
in all of us.
She lives in the deepest place
of our souls
where spontaneity and surprise
overrule the grimness of getting
through the day.
She flaps her arms to soar with
hawks through feathery white clouds,
falls down in delight to examine
a blue flowered weed
pushing its way through the sidewalk crack,
cartwheels down the bread aisle
at the market,
and asks the homeless guy on the corner
his name.
She is fearless,
innocently faultless,
disarming in a gentle way,
unpolished,
easily provoked to dance.
She thinks that if she stretches
tall enough she can
really reach a star.
O beautiful child,
wanderer in my soul,
rise within me.
Soften the jagged
edges of my life.