17 YEAR WHITE CHEDDAR

In a cellar where the lantern light
Moves softly across the stone at night,
There rests a wheel of patient gold,
A cheese now seventeen years old.
Not young and bright with milky cheer,
Not rushed by season, week, or year,
But shaped by silence, dust, and air,
By waiting longer than most dare.

Seventeen summers crossed the hill,
Seventeen winters, cold and still,
While outside rivers rose and fell,
The cheese remained within its shell.
It heard no songs of passing crowds,
No thunder hidden in the clouds,
Yet somehow gathered all of time
Into its rind like ancient rhyme.

When first it formed, it knew the scent
Of fresh green fields and rain that went
Across the backs of grazing cows
And drifted through the orchard boughs.
The milk was young, the day was clear,
No hint of seventeen long years
Could be imagined in that room
Where curds began their patient bloom.

The cheesemaker, with steady hand,
Could never fully understand
The future waiting in the wheel,
The flavors years would slowly seal.
A little salt, a careful turn,
A faith that time itself would learn
To carve a map of hidden lands
Across the work of human hands.

And so it waited.

Day by day,
The months and years slipped far away.
The rind grew firm, the color deep,
While dust stood guard and shadows sleep.
The cellar stones grew old as well,
Each carrying a tale to tell.
The wooden shelves would creak and sigh,
Marking the seasons drifting by.

A child was born and learned to run.
A student studied, then was done.
A tree put forth its leaves each spring,
Then shed them in a copper ring.
The moon completed countless rounds,
Foxes wandered forest grounds,
And still the cheese endured the years,
Unmoved by triumphs, loss, or fears.

At two years old it tasted wise.
At five, a spark lit up surprise.
At eight, it held a deeper tone,
A flavor fully grown and known.
At ten, it seemed a noble thing.
At twelve, a cellar-bound old king.
Yet seventeen would bring a grace
No hurried craft could e'er replace.

For age had etched a thousand lines
Invisible within its signs.
Crystals glittered in the paste
Like tiny stars of patient taste.
Each one a totem to time,
A mineral poem, clear and fine.
Not jewels mined from mountain seams,
But treasures born from dairy dreams.

If cheese could speak, what would it say
After seventeen years away
From sunlight, meadow, wind, and rain,
From every loss and every gain?

Perhaps it would recall the grass
That bent before the cattle passed.
Perhaps it would remember dew
And skies of endless summer blue.
Perhaps it would speak softly then
Of all the years it never spent
In haste or worry, rush or race,
But simply aging into place.

"Look," it might whisper, "humans run.
They chase the moon, they chase the sun.
They count the hours, fear delay,
And wish their waiting time away.
Yet here beneath the earth I found
A richer rhythm underground.
The slowest road, the longest art,
Can shape the deepest kind of heart."

The cellar listens.
No reply
Comes echoing beneath the sky.
Only silence, cool and deep,
The ancient language things can keep.
A language spoken not in words
But in migrations of the birds,
In mountains weathered grain by grain,
In rivers carving stone with rain.

Then comes the day.

The wheel is brought
From years of darkness into thought.
A table waits beneath warm light.
The room is filled with keen delight.
A knife approaches, bright and thin,
Prepared to see the world within.

The rind gives way.

A fragrant breeze
Escapes the cheese.
Not loud, not fierce, but rich and broad,
A scent that makes the moment odd—
As if a cellar door has opened
Into memories long unspoken.
Nuts and earth and buttered hay,
Echoes of a distant day.

A slice is cut.

The crystals shine.
The texture tells its own design.
The years are visible at last,
A map composed of aging past.
And when the first small taste is known,
The waiting finally is shown.

No single flavor stands alone.
Each note has found another tone.
Sweetness walks beside the savory.
Sharpness mingles with the airy.
A meadow greets a winter cave.
The young and old together wave.
Seventeen years become a song
Held in a bite that won't last long.

And that is why the cheese is grand:
Not merely milk or craft or hand,
But proof that time can sometimes be
A quiet form of artistry.
For while the world rushed overhead,
The wheel kept aging where it lay,
Collecting years like drops of rain
Until they formed a golden plain.

So raise a toast, if toast you please,
To seventeen-year-old cheese.
To patience hidden underground,
To wisdom that need make no sound.
To every slow and careful thing
That does not bloom in just one spring.
To all that waits, and waits, and grows,
Far deeper than the world yet knows.

And somewhere in a cool stone room,
Beyond the reach of haste and gloom,
Another wheel begins its stay,
Ju...