A couple of weeks ago, I braved moving on from sketching to do my first acrylic painting. The subject was a humble freshly picked tomato from the family allotment. The painting isn’t perfect but I’m quite proud of my effort.
Mister suggested I accompany my picture with a saucy, gently humorous free verse poem that I wrote more than two decades ago and then posted on my blog in its early days. The verses heralded from a challenge I set one winter Sunday afternoon while visiting some dear friends. This followed on from a roast dinner and an unspecified number of glasses of red wine, so all present were feeling particularly merry. It involved us each writing a poem in five minutes on a given subject, the first subject being “tomato”.
Plump tomato you remind me of Maisie on a Sunday, scrubbed clean beneath a fresh bonnet, shiny red cheeks green eyes and lace frills, smiling, basket upon arm. Maisie loves the vicar and brings him freshly picked tomatoes matching her cheeks. She smells of compost and lavender soap. He asks her for lunch after church. Their eyes meet over large tomatoes eaten whole that squelch as the juice runs down their chins. She giggles into her lace handkerchief, he wipes his chin on the tablecloth, and over the crockery they kiss, all tasting of fresh tomatoes. She giggles some more. He squeezes Maisie the plump tomato and they disappear under the table beneath newly-pressed linen. Maisie's cheeks ripen until she shines with the shiny red plumpness of ready-to-eat fruit. The vicar praises God for tomatoes and descends upon Maisie for dessert. Copyright(c)Sarah Potter, 1997
