Planting Tomatoes

She loves the yellow-pear tomatoes best, their promise 
of sugar. The cherry; red as apples, and round, 
the grape; ovals of pale moss or deep olive, orange echoes 
pulsing under striated skins.

The lump was the size of the tiniest fruit
in the white bowl she filled with the garden’s last harvest;
a cherry, but still green, its crown a five-pointed-star 
linked to the larger fruit beside it, already blushing red.

No, a lump that size can’t hide. 
Hers was more like a seed of that sphere. 
She missed a season in the garden, the soil turned and rich, 
then abandoned. All summer 
she watched squirrels race in the lonely rows.

After surgery, Janet sits bare-legged in warm September dirt,
her hands an incantation over its surface. She chants her plan:
carrots to support tomatoes to protect asparagus,
basil and spearmint on watch at the perimeter.

Already the radiation is doing its work, already 
she holds a new crop of tiny beads in her palm.

SUSIE BERG

Susie Berg is the author of two full-length poetry collections (All This Blood, 2017 and How to Get Over Yourself, 2014) and three chapbooks, and a former co-curator of Toronto’s Plasticine Poetry reading series. Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies, and she has been a frequent feature reader on poetry stages. Find her schedule and other details at susieberg.ca, or follow her on Twitter @SusieDBerg.