Jenny Billings Beaver’s most recent poem here was Cancer. Today’s poem brings us into her world so we can almost taste those summer tomatoes and we can actually feel her loss.
Oxheart
By Jenny Billings Beaver
Behind Poppa’s shed, he grew
the best cantaloupe in town.
Corn so sweet and the biggest blood
red tomatoes you ever saw.
One July, he picked all his tomatoes,
sold them to a local market for $2 a pound,
brought us the softball sized outcasts in a cardboard box
that bowed in the middle.
They were the size of softballs,
he believed in the magic of his farm’s top soil,
how investing a little time
made all the difference.
The next day, he was back in the garden,
preparing the earth for new plants, plucking
weeds, when a sharp pain caught
in his left shoulder. He struggled
to breathe, knees collapsing into the dirt.
A week later, I came home to the cardboard box.
A single, heart shaped tomato was waiting there–
over-ripened, sitting in a puddle
where it had begun to soften and mold.
I could have thrown it away
but I didn’t. I cut out the bad spots,
saved what was worth saving,
what was able to be saved.
Jenny, this is a vividly, beautiful tribute to your father.
Really, really loves this. Poignant and sweet.
Very touching. Lovely memory.