Summer’s Last Tomatoes

The morning paper lists how many minutes
the sunlight lasts — fact without a hint
of the three minutes lost since
yesterday. In late September, even
those who do not track the time,
as I do, can be startled by the rapid,
sure decline of days growing
hooded at both ends.
 
Mare’s tails float across the sky, and,
like a round cloud,  the pale moon
rides with them. Nothing is so urgent
as to sit in the first fall chill
with my back full to the sun.
I’ve brought summer’s last tomatoes
to the garden bench.
 
The rose, in its second year, seems eager
to prove its worth and turns the trellis
pink. The veronicas, though past
their prime, offer their topmost spikes
to bees, and slowly, indulgently, I slice
the fruit — flamboyantly red against the white plate —
as one departing instant becomes the next.

Published originally in POETRY, 2003 

From My Mother’s Hospital Window

Plate glass, eleven floors, a highway,
and a park separate us, the park lamps
inadequately spaced so the tiny figure
disappears, going from one cone of light —
through the darkness — toward
         
the next. I watch for him.
Beyond the park is the river where
a police boat speeds upstream, leaving
a reflected shiver of fire. It’s been a long day.
The tower with my office shimmers beyond
 
the bridge I’ve taken several times
since dawn, back and forth between
poles of responsibility. And now
the relative quiet; across the room
my mother sleeps. Far below,
 
in the turmoil of the city, cars
pour over, under, and beside
coiling exit ramps. The figure
clips the corner of the next cone of light.
And then, once more, he’s gone.
 

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© Copyright, 2012, Jacquelyn Malone.
All rights reserved.