The Dessert

Beyond the rim of waking hours,

Where twilight spins in amber towers,

A sleepy magic softly breathes

Through ancient vines and copper leaves.

Upon the shelf of half-remembered dreams,

She sits enshrined in golden-brown gleams—

The Brown Betty, queen of the earthen spell,

Guard of the tales that the grandmothers tell.

Her glaze is the hue of a chestnut in fall,

Touched by the ghosts of a long-ago hall,

Where hearthfires flickered and winters were deep,

And time moved as slow as a child in his sleep.

Lift up her lid—let the rising mist fly,

Not steam of the kettle, but wings of the sky!

Out pours a dragon of cinnamon-spice,

Winged with the magic of sugar and ice.

A sip from the cup, and the years fall away,

We walk through the moss of a yesterday.

Fairies of butterscotch, pixies of pear,

Dance in the vapor that curls through the air.

The teapot remembers what modern hearts lose:

The rhythm of patience, the quiet to choose.

Oh, vessel of magic, of comfort, of clay,

Carry me back to the start of the day.

When the world was a story, unwritten and true,

And the Brown Betty brewed all the wonder I knew.