The Dessert

The kitchen floor is built of drifting clouds,

Where grand-dames churn the fog and weave the shrouds

Of yesterday. A clock melts on the wall,

Its hands revolving backward through the fall.

Upon a zinc-spun table, levitating high,

Suspended in the amber, floats the pie.

Its crust is quilted from the golden leaves

Of autumns past, caught underneath the eaves

Of memory. The lattice breathes and sighs,

Unfurling like the lids of sleepy eyes.

Inside, the planets of the orchards roll—

MacIntosh moons dissolving in a bowl

Of cinnamon and stardust, slow and deep,

A harvest pulled from the ravines of sleep.

The oven door swings open to the stars,

Exhaling warmth across the iron bars

Of decades gone. A vapor rises, sweet

With ghost-lit orchards and the phantom heat

Of hands now turned to dust, yet pressing dough

In rooms we left a century ago.

One slice is cut with knives of liquid glass,

And as it drifts, the ticking seasons pass:

A fork of pewter punctures through the years,

To taste the syrup of forgotten tears,

And swallow time, before the shadows fly

Back to the center of the cooling sky.