One Shall Remain

If you measure Summer by the school year, then it is fast coming to a close, but in truth, it is barely half-over. A sure sign of this is our vegetable garden, which is, in actuality, more of a tomato garden. For a week or two, now, we've had a small trickle of ripe fruit, but I can sense that trickle is about to become a torrent. I wait for few things like I do the ripening of the tomatoes. Perhaps it's the Italian in me - or the hippie - but I honestly believe almost every dish is made better by fresh, home-grown tomatoes. In fact, they hardly need accompaniment. Their flavor, alone, is enough to make them tastier than the ripest apple or pear. Your whole self is awakened in the experience of a tomato garden - nose full of the ripe, earthy scent of the wet leaves, hands stained green from the stalks, shoes heavy with damp earth...

Did I mention we also have chili peppers?

One Shall Remain

A word or two, I took no more,
and lingered on them all the less -

though they revealed a fair rapport
of days undrawn in loveliness,
soft-spoken, as before -

and thought that I might metre on,
against the turning of the vein -

a grand and burnished paragon
that owns a pearl to be plain,
as even it, withdrawn -

but what a lunacy to bleed

the vessel of its liberty -

my seeming wealth could not exceed

such light and bantam poverty,

when I, alone, make need -

for, if I could allow embrace,

then I might bear a wider yoke -

no words of mine can clear a place,

nor sound escape the closing choke,

unless by other grace -

but, as it is, a heart is mine,

and, somehow, whispered over all -

when I have missed the siren sign

of words that I cannot recall,

one shall remain, and shine,

however small.