THIS OLD CLOWN

LOVING YOU’S BEEN MY ANSWERED PRAYER

As I sit here in this lonely room

With its painted sky and paper moon

I’m haunted by a time recalled

In a picture hanging on the wall

A younger man stares down at me

Am I the man he thought I’d be?

Beneath the cracks that time reveals

Still live the dreams that age conceals

Won’t you take a chance on this old clown?

With his weary soul and weathered frown

Though the best of me’s behind me now

I’ll pick you up

I’ll pick you up

If you fall down

Once I saw the world through jaded eyes

But a blind man still can hear a lie

Mistakes, I’ve made more than my share

But loving you’s been my answered prayer

Won’t you take a chance on this old clown

With his weary soul and weathered frown

Though the best of me’s behind me now

I’ll pick you up

I’ll pick you up

If you fall down

A raging fire soon burns out it’s flame

But this faithful heart will never change

Mistakes, I’ve made more than my share

But loving you’s been my answered prayer

Won’t you take a chance on this old clown?

With his weary soul and weathered frown

Though the best of me’s behind me now

I’ll pick you up

I’ll pick you up

I’ll pick you up

If you fall down

-I wrote this lyric one long and lonely night, eight years ago. I was home alone. I had just gotten the call that my eldest son had been kicked out of the long term recovery program he was in for being caught using again. I’d never felt so low. I wondered, how could I have failed him? Did I fail my wife and family? Had I failed myself? As I sat there draining a bottle of wine in that moonlit room, I kept looking up at a picture of my wife and I, and our three sons, hanging on the wall. The lines “Little pitchers have big ears/Don’t stop to count the years” from John Prine’s “Sam Stone”, playing over and over in my head. We were all so young and innocent. It was only yesterday. There’s no perfect life. There’s just life. You get at it. She’s still my saving grace. She is my answered prayer.