This most moderate of harvests
continues into autumn’s grayest day,
a quiet bounty of tomatoes,
romas, an even dozen
San Marzanos, remarkably dull
if eaten raw, but simmered
into sauce – sweet, pale pink and perfect,
the fourth marinara we’ve reduced
from this single plant, staked
against an eastward facing wall,
reflected morning light
beating at it all the summer long.

This plant is my hero. And next to it
a squat sidekick, its Sancho Panza,
a trailing cherry tomato.
I hunker down, joints aching,
to pluck the little scarlet marbles,
briefly firm but collapsing within hours.

They must be eaten soon,
and will be, crimson color prettifying
the bowl of greens you cut
from the wild patch of mesclun mix -
orach and mizuna, endive and half
a dozen others we could never name -
a few weeds, even, blown in on the wind
or dropped from the talons of eagles
like messages from Olympos.

Whatever they are, we have eaten
at them since July at least -
September now – and we are still
upright, though I wonder
at this pull in my thigh,
this constant ache and expletive of pain
as I try to stand with my bowl
of beautiful tomatoes, and you
with greenery that deserves a lyric
as alive as the force
that shimmers in those vibrant leaves.

You reach a hand to pull
me up and I could be another
straggler, another wind-riding
traveler that is finished
with all travels, that has finally found
a piece of earth
and place to be.