The Baker

A baker sits looking out the into the vast field

kneading lumps of dough until they yield.

Sitting out in the field is a father and son

who cherish the game the boy just won.

A rolling pin flattens the sweetness

into a canvas of tasty endlessness.

The baker wants the dough just like the kid

and in the end that is what she did.

She raises a misshapen cutter and tosses it aside,

just enough time for the dough to hide

where it explores the bakery alone,

meeting every cookie and cupcake on its own.

The dough likes the way gingerbread has clothes

and how the cupcake has a beautiful rose.

He began to shape himself to have a shirt

with a great big rose he plucked from the dirt.

The baker came back wondering for the dough,

but found him seeing what he shouldn't know.

She plucks him from the bakery top

about as angry as a farmer who lost his crop

tearing the shirt to a shred

slicing the rose a mass of red

crushing the doughy mass,

for no discrepancies would pass.

He saw a world she doesn't want him to look at,

so he says he will stay in the dough vat.

The air is still around the dough save a buzz

that sits to tell him how the world was.

He hears about the rains in the skies

and the thatched cover of crisp apple pies

from his six-legged new visitor

who tells him of nature and sweets all more.

With a slap and a deep crimson puddle

the hand makes the fly a muddle.

The dough is already woven well

crust embroidered in new snowfell

with sweet adornments of a lily-petal

ready for the warm embrace of sheet metal.

The baker shut the window to the outside

to make sure the dough could not hide

from the surgeon set of cutters,

and raises her well-sharpened gutter.

She flays the remorseful lattice clean off

to toss the petals in the water trough.

The dough was only allowed to be

the boy that she forced him to see.

The baker slit the dough for show,

drawing a line from high to low

of a happy little boy she saw then

deep in his desolate cold skin. 

She sliced around this jagged mold

to remove all pieces of his gold.

Into the warmth of the oven

to join an old coven

of same little breads

he so long dreads.

Ten minutes to cook

then to have a look

in and through

the risen dough.

He just isn't him

not even a limb.

A little rose

never grows.

And a shirt

didn't hurt.

Snow so cool

broke a rule.

Little lily

was too wily.

He can't-

Not a scant.

He yearns

and

burns