The Oddest Thing Of All

What to make of this
thing we call Life?
Some offer answers from
the Book they say is “God’s”
while others assert and insist
it’s all a matter of random odds.
Perhaps we’re in a dream not ours—
but of the One Complete.
Yet if this be so, I wonder
more at His troubled sleep.
The oddest thing of all is that
I find it odd at all, absent
a memory of ... what?
Another life?
If this is all I’ve known,
what other world could I divine?
What mad notion compels me to
entertain something more sublime?
Then too, perhaps the dream is mine alone
to write and play as I may choose,
with schemes and scenes and lesser
dreams for others to consider thus.
If that, then have I the Gods designed?
Is my self-deception so complete?
Is such genius stuff in me so devised
to lay great Mysteries at my own feet?

Copyright © 2005 Robert D. McKinley
All rights reserved.