The Meaning of Life

The Meaning of Life

There is no meaning, someone scrawled on a boulder
We used to pass by on our way out to a rock overhang
written boldly in spray paint
Next to god is dead,
Sometimes my mother felt compelled to answer
But what she said stays in the past,
I only brought the granite forward
I was just a child in a car moving forward in the sixties,
Slowly erosion, snows, crawling vines reclaimed
This billboard of the roadway.

It seems that I failed the one thing my father most wanted
Because I cannot seem to make money
Get a good job, save, earn
It was like water through a sieve
The greatest testament to happiness and living
Seemed to be defined by the accumulation of wealth
For him, and looking around now I know he meant well
It opens opportunity, doors, heavens
My age took a vow of prosperity.

I dreamed of someone
At a racetrack betting with a brother
Sitting in the stands describing to him
-while they joked, laughed, drank and partied-
This naive woman that gave them enough
Material to generate hilarity all day
Jokes, sex, two guys out playing the odds
Let the good times roll

A wise man tells me now to balance
Carefully over the carnival below me
Without looking down
Holding my breath as I step across the rope
Seeing the horses running, some coins on the street,
And that proclamation written for some reason here too
That we are balls in play juggling the emotions
While we walk the tightropes doing our own tricks
Choosing our steps with care.

Maybe I don't see so well in the dark
But ultimately life rushes around me provoking feelings,
Reactions, sinking and swimming
Currents and eddies in a chain of illusions
Of time and the river,
Small drop in an ocean of meanings
I can't see the whole
Though I am carried within it
Contained by the experience I am just the medium.