Cloistered In The Middle

Nothing in life is ever finished, be it loving,
grieving or disliking tapioca pudding. Perhaps
finality will come with death and resurrection
so it can all begin again – but I suspect that even
that won’t change the scheme of things to come.

A eulogy for my demise would have a poignant
rendering of life’s triumphs, of love and grief, a
reading of some poetry, a mention, in a humorous
vein, to mark that episode again on tapioca
pudding – the chapter I’d excise from life.

I laugh about it now and then, a dish so burnt
with blistered skin and full of eyes of tiny fish
boiled well beyond redemption. I
couldn’t bring myself to eat it then,
and even now my stomach turns.

And thus forever I can claim I’m cloistered
in the mass of things that happened in my life,
to revel in the greatest loves, stumble from the
deepest grief, while my dislikes, perchance their
fate, will linger on the turgid lips of so-called friends

who find them quaint, who’ll paint them as
the essence of the man who’ll live again in legend
as the maker of the riddle, who claimed alike for life
and death, saying, Mate, it’s just a case of being
cloistered in the middle.
© I.D. Carswell 2006