The Dessert

The kitchen floats in an amber sea,

Where upside-down clocks drip lazily.

A harvest moon has cracked its shell,

And baked into a porcelain bell.

Upon the counter, pale and high,

Rests the enigma of the pear-gruyère pie.

The pears are phantoms, sliced thin as glass,

Reflecting shadows of hours that pass.

They sink in a dream of buttered dough,

Where rivers of memory softly flow.

And sleeping above them, a blanket of gold—

The pungent ghost of a winter old.

Gruyère, like clouds of a textured sleep,

Entangles the fruit where the secrets keep.

Is it sweet? Is it sharp? Is it waking or rest?

The crust holds a map of an untveled west.

I lift up a shard with a silver spoon,

And taste the twilight, the rind of the moon.

The landscape dissolves as the flavors align:

A ghost of the orchard, a breath of the vine.

We slice through the surreal, the heavy, the light,

And swallow the center of wandering night.