The Humor Of The Universe Poem by Ronald Wallace

Who was it said, comedy is when
you slip on a banana peel and fall down
and smack your head; tragedy is when
I get a hangnail? The universe doesn't
care, or distinguish the two, but goes on
about its business of what might seem to us
irony, but, of course, isn't, any more than
our parody of order is ever that. And yet,
we care, all 5.5 billion of us, gods of our
domains, in our houses or hovels, our
forests or factories, doing what we do
best, producing meaning, as if there is
an order to it all, and not just nothingness
and the rending fabric of space. What place
in the grand scheme of things do we have
but to sit on our hands and project ourselves
out into the future, as if there were a
scheme of things, and as if it were grand.