This morning the tomatoes told me
not to expect they wouldn’t notice
the year’s curve – how cold it was
in the early morning,
how the stretch of sun and heat
was shorter, how if I had wanted
a bumper crop, I should have done better
on the early side of the season,
should have given them
more high summer to work with.

As it is, they told me,
some of them will ripen.
Just maybe not as many
as I had hoped.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 25, 2020