The Lids

The tupperware came to her kitchen
from Moscow, Mombasa, Madrid,
its colours as fresh as a paint-chart,
each pot with its hermetic lid.

These vessels she put in her cupboard,
a cavity largely unlit,
and she thought of them safe in that darkness,
each lid with its hermetic fit.

Her spatulas had golden handles,
her cooker was clean as new snow,
her fridge hummed a comforting carol
her knives shivered through her gateaux.

But leftover cakes need their storage,
she rummaged for pot and for pot.
Yet lids to fit pots, could she find one?
I have to report she did not.

All imported goods face inspections,
from Moscow, Mombasa, Madrid,
but witchery lurked in her cupboard,
to sequestrate vessel from lid.

Conundrum as old as the planet,
enigma that cannot be hid,
one cosmos exists for the vessel,
another exists for the lid.

She reached for her fine education
in music and physics and maths,
she wrote to the people at NASA,
and other high-paid polymaths.

O where were those deft mathematicians
with blackboards and pieces of chalk
to patch up this glitch in the cosmos
where vessels and lids would not talk?

She asked all the purple archbishops
if this was original sin,
that ill-fitting lids were the outcome
when hermetic seals had gone in?

The polymaths prelates, professors
all told the same story and more,
how unmatching kitchen containers,
were snagged at Reality’s core.

She put back her gear in her cupboard,
each vessel and ill-fitting lid,
then padlocked that mischievous darkness
from Moscow, Mombasa, Madrid.