Humpty Dumty:
Revised:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
placed up there carefully, told not to fall,
set in a balance he could not defend,
with no understanding of where it would end.
They said it was safe, they said it was right,
that height was a measure of worth in their sight,
that being above was a thing to admire,
though none ever spoke of the cost climbing higher.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,
not from misstep, nor by chance at all,
for what is a fall but the end of a place
that never was meant to be held anyway?
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
rushed to assemble the pieces again,
not out of care, nor grief, nor remorse—
but to prove they still held control over force.
But some things once broken refuse to align,
not out of defiance, but simple design,
for cracks are not flaws that can always be sealed,
and damage once done does not ask to be healed.
Humpty Dumpty lay where he fell,
while voices insisted that all would be well,
and somewhere beneath all the effort and claims…
no one admitted
They made it that way.
J F Barb