German Johnson Tomatoes

Summer Produce Series

It’s Friday*, which means it’s also Summer Produce Series day! If you’re new,

Claire

and I started a poetry series together. You can read more about it here.

*I initially wrote this post on Friday, but due to travel plans and my daughter getting sick, I am posting it today.

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As today came closer, I struggled to put pen to paper on my tomato poem. There’s so much about this fruit that makes it poetry-worthy and, yet, I couldn’t seem to come up with anything. That is, until I remembered my friend’s wonderfully red and tasty tomato patch. She planted an array of seasonal produce early on in the summer and had to leave it behind for a month due to an out-of-state trip.

I thought about her garden often, as I’m sure she did too, while she was gone. I wondered if everything would wilt and die before having a chance to bear fruit. To my surprise, when I went for a visit after her return, her sweet garden was doing splendidly. All of her tomato varieties had survived, as had everything else. It wasn’t my garden, but I shared in the joy of her harvest. I even got to taste it, given she let me take a bunch of tomatoes home. A real summer treat.

This week’s poem is loosely based on the events described above. I tried to explore the personification of the tomato, as well as to juxtapose our neglect (whether intentional or not) against God’s ability to make things thrive. How often do we forget or abandon the work of God in us? Only to find it is he who continues and perfects it, despite our human efforts.

Just like the neglected tomatoes in this piece, I know God’s grace makes me grow and bear fruit even when I fail to water and tend to the garden of my heart.

Keep scrolling & enjoy the poem below!

German Johnson Tomatoes 

Tomatoes grow effortlessly 
on Ohioan soil 
Not a high maintenance fruit,
unattended, left
solely at the mercy of summer storms
Accepting the neglect,

crimson bubbles burst
full of righteous anger
Red, rushing blood
spilling over their faces
plump and prepared, without pretense,
to be chewed straight off the vine

Their defiance to exude the tastiest scent
grow robust, even drape, over the fence
despite a thirty-day abandonment
Now, hands spill over
with ruby-colored German Johnsons 
An unexpected gift of providence

   - r.e.g.