Tony Burfield

Tomato Dusk

We count the tomatoes red and green. And our yard yucca roll-call. The deer have eaten all the stalk tips. I deconstruct the old grill to build a table for the outside work, for saws and nails, those hammers, my work gloves. Beside my sweat and tools, traffic surges in leaf-peeper ecstasy and the motorcyclists die in droves. The highway crosses pile-up in memoriam, cruxifixal road bones. And with these tomatoes we christen the summer dead too, all tools rusted.

dry fox jaw sun
baked all summer –
tomato dusk