SEPTEMBER

September Tomatoes

🍁🍂 The whiskey stink of rot has settled

in the garden,

and a burst of fruit flies rises

when I touch the dying tomato plants.

Still, the claws of tiny yellow blossoms

flail in the air as I pull the vines up by the roots

and toss them in the compost.

It feels cruel.

Something in me isn’t ready

to let go of summer so easily.

To destroy what I’ve carefully cultivated all these months.

Those pale flowers might still have time to fruit.

My great-grandmother sang with the girls of her village

as they pulled the flax.

Songs so old and so tied to the season that the very sound seeemed to turn the weather 🍁🍂