Wonder and Awe

by jim

Do you look at today with wonder and awe?
Can you understand parts of life you never saw?

Can you look down and laugh at your toes?
Or are you wrapped up in the little the world knows?

Can you use a mirror to entertain yourself for some time
To make funny faces and change the path of sunshine?

Don’t remember colors just because they are called by some names
But because each is warm or cool, or moves or remains.

Don’t be afraid because you don’t know what it means;
You can a thing is different than what it seems.

Did you learn and see so much when you were small
That there is nothing left to amaze you at all?

Or are your eyes closed to raindrops and a firefly;
To knobs that turn, to words you can’t read, to stars in the sky?

Are you wise to be child-like in a childish world
Without being childish as your life has unfurled?

Are you awed by tall mountains and valleys that are deep?
Do you wonder why people dream while they sleep?

Are you bothered because you don’t understand a task
Or maybe you just don’t know what questions to ask?

Has life left you frozen in a trance
So you are afraid to take another chance?

Have you climbed so high that you are afraid to look down?
Did you come too close and your life ran aground?

Are you awed by a flickering fire and shadows cast in the night?
Do you wonder with the morning and await the first early light?

Are you amazed at the distance of the mighty stars?
Do you wonder about each person starring from behind bars?

Are you awed by the planets and the depths of the seas?
During a hot day, have you smiled with a cool breeze?

Are you awed by silence or a thunderous roar?
Have you forgotten how to open the right door?

Do your eyes tell you where you can reach
So your mind does not learn and does not teach?

Have you gone so far that you are nowhere at all?
Have you gone so far up that you have started to fall?

Do you wonder how things move; are you awed by things that fly?
Have you often failed to succeed because you failed to try?

Are you awed by the forest or by each tree?
Are you pleased by what you hold or what is free?

Can you see the world from another point of view?
Are you awed by yourself and what you can do?

Did you learn and see so much when you were small
That there is nothing left to amaze you at all?