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Monday, July 21, 2014

Carol Coffee Reposa: "Vegetable Love in Texas"














Farmers say
There are two things
Money can't buy:
Love and homegrown tomatoes.

I pick them carefully.
They glow in my hands, shimmer
Beneath their patina of warm dust
Like talismen.

Perhaps they are.
Summer here is a crucible
That melts us down
Each day,

The sky a sheet of metal
Baking cars, houses, streets.

Out in the country
Water-starved maize

Shrivels into artifacts.
A desiccated cache
Of shredded life.
Farmers study archeology

In limp straw hats.
But still I have
This feeble harvest,
Serendipity in red:

Red like a favorite dress,
Warm like a dance,
Lush like a kiss long desired,
Firm like a vow, the hope of rain.



"Vegetable Love in Texas" by Carol Coffee Reposa, from Texas Poetry Calendar: 2008. © Dos Gatos Press, 2008.

Art credit: "Tomatoes in Basket," photograph by Diane Pratt (originally color).

 

4 comments :

  1. "Summer here is a crucible.....". I wonder what words the author would use to describe the searing heat of summer 2022.

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