Saturday, August 29, 2009

Victor for a Day

Another installment in The Further Chronicles of the Tomato Garden! It appears that the seventh plague has fallen upon the house of Israel, and God has punished the unbelievers with blossom-end rot. This cancer begins as an innocuously off-colour spot on the bottom of the green tomato, but, as the tomato matures, spreads out, leprous-like, until the entire lower half of the ripe tomato is a festering, black cesspit of evil. Fortunately, this is not caused by any parasite or disease, but simply by a lack of calcium in the soil. Unfortunately, the only immediate solution is to amputate the affected fruit to prevent the leeching of nutrients from healthy tomatoes, then saturate the soil with a calcium supplement and pray that the angel of death passes over. So far, about a third to half of our present ripening crop has been affected, but forecasts for the future are good, thanks to the quick response of the ministering angel known as Quiet Cartesian. Up, up, and away!


Victor for a Day

I came upon a little friend,
a monument of care,
who found it fit to condescend
a smile on me, there.

I lifted her and laid her by,
as pardon for my plea,
upon a bower bed, to lie
in limpid reverie,

and stole her dowry from the store
that she had set aside;
no guard was set upon the door,
no bulwark for the bride.

A smile, and a dowry paid,
and so I slipped away,
to tell the treasure, and the raid -
a victor for a day.

3 comments:

Kindred Spirit said...

Nice poem, and I really enjoyed garden post; as a gardener, I can totally relate to the plague imagery.

Have you seen this site? The link is: http://www.societyofscholastics.org/societassapientis_022.htm

Total Thomism, all in one location!

Cartesian Quies said...

Thanks as always, Kindred. That's a very interesting website. If you enjoy that sort of thing, you should check out this blog.
http://thomism.wordpress.com/

Kindred Spirit said...

Salve! And thanks for the link; it's very interesting. You probably have had all of the courses listed on the site I sent to you, but I thought that your students might like to see it. My daughter's a Latin professor in a small Catholic college, so I'll try to find some sites from her which might be of interest to you. Vale!