Nut clusters, caramels, jujubes,
and icing squeezed from pastry tubes
in neat iterations of rosettes
on confectioners’ work tables: it gets
no better than this, or even as good.
Our mouths water before such food,
and, during, enjoy, but then, quite soon,
it cloys, as we reach our limit, where
such goodness is too much to bear,
denying as soon as it asserts
in a lesson that chastens us and hurts.