Foot Falls Along the Way

I stand barefoot,
toes deep in the sand along the shore,
And look up into the moonlit sky.
In the roar of the waves,
I hear the murmur
of questions I haven’t pondered since my youth.

What is my purpose inside this riddle of a life?
What is the meaning of life itself?

Born on the outside looking in,
A Jew among Gentiles, an agnostic among believers,
I moved from one group to another,
My camouflage, always mismatched,
never catching up to the time or space I occupied.

Searching, as if answers could be unearthed
In the solemn archways of cathedrals
Or the rebellious alleys of the sixties.

I submerged myself in the pages of books by Hermann Hesse,
Sought solace in meditation, joined Siddhartha
as we wandered the path to enlightenment.

Nothing was impossible.
If Moses could part the Red Sea,
If Jesus could turn water to wine,
Then Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land
could lie at the bottom of a pool for hours,
Grokking the meaning of life itself.

Back in the day,
I searched the smoke-filled,
lava lamp-lit rooms in the Village,
The haze mingling with murmurs of revolution.
There was fellowship in those spaces,
A shared hunger for change,
As if Xanadu hovered just beyond the horizon.

Returning to the present, toes wiggling in wet sand
beneath the stars that will outlast us all,
I wonder if life’s meaning isn’t answered,
But found in the footfalls along the way.