Red Gail Hennessy #19

Red

This is not an Imagist poem after William Carlos Williams

 

in the supermarket aisle
the young man caresses
a ripe tomato which slips
from his hand and falls

 

for the seconds it takes

for him to decide whether

or not to return it to its pile,

 

I hold my breath

 

I remember
my young son proclaiming
a tomato is a fruit not a vegetable, and
his grandmother repeating more than twice
tomatoes belong on the kitchen sill
they keep their flavour there,
as if they had discovered
rules of classification, of storage

 

and when
the young man deliberately places
the lone tomato into his trolley

 

my moral compass steadies
so much had depended on a red tomato.

 

Gail Hennessy 2016.