Sometimes I find that I simply cannot move forwards
To follow the path I want to take.
The gears whirr noisily inside my head,
And the controller shouts “STOP. What If?”,
“STOP, What If?”
Again and again, at the top of his voice.

Racked by doubt and paralysed by fear, I
Find that I have lost my will
To continue and grind to a halt - frustrated, cross
Until stillness descends and I remember that
However wide or deep the chasm, I can build a bridge
That even only spanning imagination offers a moment when
A step can be taken and, slowly, I
Make progress once more, to come
Closer to where I want to go and am able to
Scream at the top of my voice “So What? To hell with it.”

(c) Tim O’Hare, December 2023

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About this poem: This one came quickly. I was writing in my morning journal about how I had not found any time for poetry writing for several months and starting to wonder whether perhaps this might be an indication that the well had run dry. At the same time I was thinking about the value of just putting my poems ‘out there’ without any expectation that they might ‘land’. Suddenly I found that I was writing again and this poem emerged. I wasn’t sure what to give it as a title but settled on ‘What If? | So What?” based on a phrase that I vaguely remember hearing the singer Tom Jones use in an interview years ago – something along the lines that “we must always try to turn ‘what ifs’ into ‘so whats’”.