And Another Thing (Tomato Poetry)…

This poem by Robert Paul Smith is my last farewell to this year’s tomatoes.  I found it in one of my favorite books, Farmer John’s Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables.  It immediately stuck a chord, for me, as a gardener, tomato lover and locavore.  I was suprised to find out it was writen in 1954.

And Another Thing…

 The tomato sat on the plate        And it looked like a tomato, like a real tomato      Not like a picture in a magazine             It was red, mostly            But also it was yellow, somewhat            And, in places, orange              And, at the stem end, green.         The kitchen knife sat on the plate             And the tomato cut like a tomato           Resistant, to a degree         Soft, up to a point;          And some of the seeds stayed in       And some fell on the white plate.              The tomato tasted like a tomato,            And I said to the kids, who know tomatoes              As pure red, perfectly round,           Perfectly tasteless            Absolutely uniform wet globes that come in cardboard         And cellophane package all year round       “Kids, time for you to taste a real tomato.”           They did.          And one of them looked at me          And said, “Is that what tomato tastes like?”           Yes, my children, that is what a tomato tastes like.