The Order Of Things

I

 Jack, eighteen

died on his motorbike

aneurism

the Ugly Sister

expert in camouflage

and ambuscade

after the funeral

Lenny in the corner

absent in his grief

chain-smoking with his beer

Joyce and the girls

on the veranda

with Chateau Cardboard

watching the earth-shadow

deepen into the velvet outback night

and timeless stars

it breaks the order of things

for parent to bury child

the order:

grandmother die

mother die

daughter die

II

another fifteen years:

Lenny’s “accident”

when Joyce rallied

she summoned the girls to plan

how to hold the hectares together

and divide them after she died

death sweeps the old away

to make room for the new

running the property single-handed

in the Big Dry

for pity taking the rifle

herself

to the gaunt and hopeless stock

it’s the order of things

droughts come and go

if you break first

you lose

III

she was ready, her bags packed

long before

protesting fiercely

ambulanced into the town’s “hospital”

where the girls gathered powerless

at the palliative bedside

only my enemies should suffer like this

praying for her release

as if to break the Big Dry

but the Ugly Sister

owes no favours

and kept her

dangling

© 2010

the Revd James M McPherson

Maryborough Qld

St Francis famously (and rightly) refered to Death as "Sister Death". Experience shows she can be an ugly sister sometimes, or welcome, or beautiful, which I have explored in several poems. This one dates from 2010.