It All Depends

It all depends :
Upon your dreams
Behind closed eyes,
Drifting in and out,
Nodding off and on
Until total emersion.

Subliminal are images
Beyond the conscious 
Activities of the day.
Retreat, or attack,
Go far away or return,
Be of a party, or not.

Immersed in reality,
Tempered by hot fire,
Clothed for deep cold, 
Hair finely brushed, 
Bathed in redemption,
Lost in a wilderness. 

Finding one's own self
Throwing off shackles,
Demanding of mental
Strength deeply internal,
You gather up yourself 
For life's universal battle.

You ask, "Who am I ?"
And, "Why am I here ?"
Paging your remembrances :
Being in and out of faith,
Does science make its case,
Who pulls Heaven's strings ?

You think the unthinkable :
Do we pass only once through
This conscious state of life ?
No beginning, so is there no end?
Am I bound up in this body forever, 
What is my next form to be?

How these questions are answered 
Before an Endpoint of active life
May make a tremendous difference
To those you lovingly leave behind.
But, my friend, the dismissed, to you
Clouds await your element's arrival.

Ronald. C. Downie