Margaret Humphries
Grave Poems of Spoon Island: Margaret Humphries
I have no family to care for my grave save a sister
who doesn’t care where I lay we hadn’t spoken
for fourty years after an argument over weight
which of us was bigger?
in the course of our lives we both became wives
and widows in our turn both without children
or words between us to ease the burden of solitude
then her house burned down and she found another
and all the townspeople gave her furniture and clothes
and I in a fit of Christian charity
thought of her plight and how silly it was
for two grown women to fight over such a childish thing!
deciding to make amends
I went to her with twenty dollars I had laid by
she was sorting clothes when I arrived
handed me a pair of trousers out of a box and said
you can wear these they’re three sizes to big for me!
and I spent the twenty on a lark and never spoke to her again
