You know them well,
for they have long ridden roughshod
through our dreams.
In their wake, destruction of all meaning.
Riding horses painted from hell’s palette,
they charge forward to
strike terror in our hearts.
The four horsemen of Apocalypse
look not back on the havoc
they have left.
Pestilence, war, famine and death
are trophies collected.
Their forward charge is not slowed
by human cry or tear.
With them rides the fifth horseman,
more cruel and determined
than the other four.
This horseman charges forward
with the four you know.
But the fifth horseman also returns
to haunt the past.
Before me, behind me,
always with me.
Black horse, white horse, and red horse and even green
are the mounts of tradition.
The fifth horseman’s mount
is many shades of changing grey.
The meanness of the fifth rider
is his very vagueness.
His name is and always has been ”What If.”
When he rides there is no sleep.
He has a bag full of
horrible and ghastly memories and possibilities.
When he returns to the past,
he shines a light on the road signs
of paths not taken.
Each night in that twilight time
before sleep,
I am forced by What If
to again peek down at
all of those travel possibilities.
I have walked each a hundred times,
so the terrain is most familiar.
And in a troubled sleep,
I live a thousand terrible scripts.
I see death, poverty, and crippling illness
for me and mine.
I battled What If for 80 years.
He always won and I lost.
When I woke on my introduction
as an octogenarian, I was determined
to escape the mental dungeon of What If.
I ran to my desk
and grabbed my red editing pen
and cornered What If
and found his Achilles heel.
I killed him off by killing his preposition!
Now I doze in peace.
I sleep with the sounds and smells of spring.
Without his venomous head,
What is a pussycat in my lap.
Doug Minnis
October 5, 2009