If You Hadn’t Paused to Read This

The game if doesn’t exist

Without language. The game if

Needs a way of constructing

The not as definitely

Not but not impossible,

That is, hypothetical.

The game if has three major

Variations, along with

Innumerable subgames.

The pragmatic game of if

Is the most valuable.

It uses past to predict

The way the past is likely

To change. Based on what is known,

What’s expected next, if this.

The forward speculation

Is more hit or miss. Call it,

At best, thought experiment—

Fantasy, at silliest—

If this unevidenced thing

Were to exist, then what’s next?

Then, there’s the backward, hopeless

Game of if. If some past bit

Had not happened as it did,

How would the rest of the past

Be different? One can change

The past, of course. The past is

Always changing, but only

By the addition of new

Things happening. There is no

Unhappening. There is no

Scenario in which life

On Earth never got started,

In which the sun never burned,

In which this or that tiny

Thing someone did wasn’t did.

And yet, in language there is.

In language there always is,

If x hadn’t, maybe this.