Getting the joke

Getting the joke
 
Each of us must leave
the soft, familiar darkness,
 
suffer the bloody push and squeeze, to enter
the noise, the motion, the color and light.
 
God makes us one way,
then insists we end up another.
 
Amidst my suffering
and all-pervasive vulnerability,
 
I’m left with little faith in divine benevolence,
whomsoever I choose to blame.
 
Floods, landslides, eruptions, tsunamis;
human violence, treachery and malice . . . .
 
I cling instead to my own unwieldy devices
to calculate a path through the world.
 
It’s my ignorance, God insists,  
that keeps me from getting the joke
 
and my suffering that makes the punchline
with its ultimate payoff worthwhile.
 
O child, play the hand God deals you.
It’s the only game in town.