Ode to Tomatoes

There are lots of things I appreciate about summer, but today as I sit here at my desk eating my lunch I am particularly thankful that summer is tomato season. I LOVE tomatoes. They're good in all their many forms and functions, of course, but in the summer I relish eating tomatoes in their natural state, fresh from the vine, perfectly ripe, cut into wedges and graced with a dash of salt. YUM.

I'm enjoying the tomato I brought for lunch so much that I almost feel prompted to craft a poem in honor of its splendidness. But, lucky for you, Pablo Neruda has already supplied the world with an excellent ode, so you will be spared my amateur adorations. Without further ado, Neruda's 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.