Vegetable Love in Texas by Carol Coffee Reposa
Since I’ve been cooking a lot lately and using a lot of vegetables, I thought I’d share this one I read in the Texas Poetry Calendar 2008. I bet Guy Clark would like it, too. A little on the author can be found here.
Vegetable Love in Texas
By Carol Coffee Reposa
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.
