Ripe tomatoes, sweet corn, peaches. They are all here, and we are eating them all. This morning, delicate white Mexican onions crisped with corn kernels, spinach and basil from the garden, and a fried egg in the middle. Is there anything better?
So here’s a tomato poem, also a love poem, also short–three excellent attributes for a poem I want to post. Early Cascade is the name of a tomato, of course:
Early Cascade
I couldn’t have waited. By the time you return
it would have rotted on the vine.
So I cut the first tomato into eighths,
salted the pieces in the dusk,
and found the flesh not mealy (like last year)
or bitter,
even when I swallowed the green crown of the stem
that made my throat feel dusty and warm. Continue reading “Summer food”