Today is a day for tomatoes. And everyone I talk to seems to know that this has been a bumper year for them in Wisconsin. Not so in other places, like Oregon for instance.
But here, they are everywhere: In my CSA boxes, my garden, even in my much neglected tiny
pot-sized garden on my back porch. I have a plant that has produced the teeniest tomatoes I have ever seen…about the size of peas. But small as they are, they have a powerful tomato taste. So I just pop a few in my mouth for a mid-day treat when i water.
So in the midst of this tomato abundance, i thought it was a good time for a tomato poem. This one was published in the chap book Tuesday, 2011 and is dedicated to my mother and to mothers everywhere:
Tomato Love: a tritina
A September sky, sun warming my back,
I walk between the beans and tomatoes,
hear distant farm noise, think of my mother.
The daughter of a farmer, my mother
left for the city, didn’t look back.
But never lost her tomato
lust, longing for the sweet, ripe tomatoes
of her youth, an elixir like a mother’s
love, or the sun warming your tired back.
This: a tomato love song to mothers.
Chris Christie,
September, 2009
