At The End Of Harvest

by Sundy Wantanabe

Three quick bites and the tomatoes are gone.

They might have hoped for two or three left
in the garden or one hidden in the fridge behind
the lettuce but know better, having already shoveled under
even the green ones this year. Had they taken

time to think, they might have sucked them slowly
past their lips, a drop or two escaping to leave
a mark on this very page. Perhaps they would have
climbed the rungs to the hayloft above the barn

and sopped the juice off a fine old-fashioned saucer
with thick whole wheat bread, the stolen bounty
of tomatoes and bread, a shaker of salt, in the balanced
crook of their arms. They could have

curved them on an Asian blue porcelain plate,
slathered their skinless red with mayonnaise, and poured
shoyu over the top until its brown licked the edges, their
wooden hashi clicking against a bowl of fresh white rice.

They should have had a bite of one and then
the other, the red and then
the white, mingling East with West, him
with her, at the end of harvest.

-- SW
©2000 by Sundy Wantanabe