Tuesday – Fall Equinox
As fall officially arrives, here’s a poem about the change of seasons. The poet feels it is wrong to uproot her tomato plants until she recalls how her great-grandmother sang as she harvested flax. The memory, I think, carries the reminder that “for everything there is a season” and that it’s time to let go of summer.
It’s not only tomato plants that die, her great-grandmother seems to be telling her through her singing. This woman is so tied in with the cycle of the seasons that her great-granddaughter realizes she must accept that, sooner or later, the whiskey stink of rot will one day settle into her garden. In the meantime, she can live, and sing, in the moment.
September Tomatoes
By Karina Borowicz
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
seemed to turn the weather.
