The wonders of tomatoes and the end of August

Our friend Karen from Tennessee tells us that she keeps a quote in her kitchen from songwriter Guy Clark: “There’s only two things that money can’t buy— that’s true love and home-grown tomatoes.”

I would like to think that Jesus would have used homegrown tomatoes at the Last Supper, the first Eucharist, if he had any.

Here is a poem Karen sent the other day that is perhaps a fitting tribute to the end to August:

Cherry Tomatoes

By Anne Higgins

Suddenly it is August again, so hot,
breathless heat.
I sit on the ground
in the garden of Carmel ,
picking ripe cherry tomatoes
and eating them.
They are so ripe that the skin is split,
so warm and sweet
from the attentions of the sun,
the juice bursts in my mouth,
an ecstatic taste,
and I feel that I am in the mouth of summer,
sloshing in the saliva of August.
Hummingbirds halo me there,
in the great green silence,
and my own bursting heart
splits me with life.