Dear Humpty had no business
Sitting on that there blooming wall
I ‘ave to say he caused me great distress
I warned him he would have a fall
“You have hostylo-pirosis! The doctor said!
You are thin-shelled and may
not survive if down you come…”
“Life is for living my Soldier friend!
Come have another tot of rum
– Life’s too short and I intend
To live it well up to its very end!”
And so it was that Humpty died
My mates and I, we tried and tried
And for the doctor we did send
But none of us could Humpty mend
And in the end, all as could be said
Was that Humpty Dumpty
was a blooming Good Egg…
© Andrew Wilson 2026
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, merrildsmith in Poetics, invites us to to give secondary characters a voice. Choose a character from a well-known story, myth, book, fairy tale, movie, play, or even song who is not the lead character. For example, John Updike wrote a novel about Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother (Gertrude and Claudius, 2000). Tom Stoppard wrote an absurdist play called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead based on the minor characters who were Hamlet’s childhood friends.