I have never found my niche, my groove or slot for which I can prove,
My worth for existing, my purpose in life or that mountain to move.
I am me and that is all good, I pay my way, not a societal drag,
My achievements are small, about which I can’t brag.

So why am I here beneath these wide skies, breathing the air,
When the universe neither knows that I live, or has reason to care.
No plan brought me here, no great purpose was written in stone,
No path was prepared, a destination never was known.

Perhaps I should be frightened, possibly it should make me feel small,
To think there is no greater meaning and no reason at all.
But must there be purpose for something to matter or be,
Does the wave need a reason to ripple the sea?

A butterfly flaps its wings far away from my sight,
A tiny disturbance of air, insignificant and light.
Yet the air that it moves moves another thing too,
And what follows from that, neither of us knew.

Perhaps I am like that, just a movement in time,
No grand destination, no reason or rhyme.
A word that I spoke may have altered a thought,
A kindness forgotten may still have meant more than I nought

Someone I met may have chosen a different way,
Because I happened to stand beside them one difficult day.
And they touched another, who touched someone more,
Until the smallest of those ripples reached some far distant shore.

I will never know where those ripples might end,
Which makes asking their purpose impossible to defend.
For there isn’t an ending where accounts will be read,
No final great ledger of all that I’ve done and I’ve said.

The atoms that make us were here long before,
There was something like me asking what they were for.
And one day they will scatter and become something new,
With no recollection that once they were you.

Perhaps existence is simply an endless cycle of noughts
No conductor above us, no celestial battles are fought,
No heavenly author deciding how it all ends,
Just cause upon cause upon cause that simply extends.

And strangely I find there is comfort in this,
I need not discover what any purpose is.
No mountain awaits me that I am destined to climb,
No symbol to carve in the bedrock of time.

I don’t need greatness to justify breath,
Or weird immortality to compensate death.
I needn’t leave monuments, fortune or fame,
The universe managed before it knew my name.

Yet because I was here, it cannot be quite,
The universe that would have existed despite,
My brief little presence, my moment, having my say,
I’ve altered it slightly by being this way.

Perhaps that’s enough. I was here. I took part.
A temporary gathering of matter of soul and of heart.
No purpose was promised, no meaning bestowed,
Yet still I have travelled this most improbable road.

And after I’m gone, things will carry on through,
Changed by the smallest of things that I do.
No destiny, heaven, great purpose or plan,
Just one tiny piece of an infinite span.

So why am I here? There may not be a why.
I’m here because here I am, sitting under this sky.
And maybe the question I struggled to prove,
Was never my purpose,
But simply to love have fun and to continually move.