Poetry Thursday - celebration and lament

Ode to Tomatoes

The street
filled with tomatoes,
midday,
summer,
light is
halved
like
a
tomato,
its juice
runs
through the streets.
In December,
unabated,
the tomato
invades
the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes
its ease
on countertops,
among glasses,
butter dishes,
blue saltcellars.
It sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
murder it:
the knife
sinks
into living flesh,
red
viscera
a cool
sun,
profound,
inexhaustible,
populates the salads
of Chile,
happily, it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the union
we
pour
oil,
essential
child of the olive,
onto its halved hemispheres,
pepper
adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding
of the day,
parsley
hoists
its flag,
potatoes
bubble vigorously,
the aroma
of the roast
knocks
at the door,
it's time!
come on!
and, on
the table, at the midpoint
of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth, recurrent
and fertile
star,
displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit,
no husk,
no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers
its gift
of fiery color
and cool completeness.

-Pablo Neruda

I had some tomatoes. They were bright, shiny, red on the vine. I picked one a little too early and set it on the windowsill to finish ripening. I went out this morning to pick the other two and savor the deliciousness of having juicy, ripe, salmonella-free tomatoes but they were gone. Not deer, because the plants aren't trampled. Not armadillos, because there are no burrows. Not squirrels, because there was no mess. The tomatoes were simply gone. Missing. No trace that they had ever existed. My garden was undisturbed except for the lack of ripe tomatoes.

Could kids be stealing my tomatoes? That would probably explain why the black-eyed peas were not touched. Perhaps I will conduct a stake out.

Damn kids. Get off my lawn!