Tomatoes Poem by gershon hepner

I love tomatoes for their smell,
for that’s the way that I can tell
if they are ripe. I love their color
when they are shining, find much duller
their rhyming cousins, the potatoes––
yes, of course I mean tomatoes.

Before you slice them like confetti
for salsa or for sauce, spaghetti,
enjoy their shape orbicularly
the cherry ones, particularly.
They say tomatoes have got stealthy
ingredients that can keep you healthy;
unlike the Brussels sprout or bean,
these vegetables have lycopene.

Tomatoes give a pleasure utter
when eaten with a pat of butter,
especially on toasted bread,
when yellow will enhance the red,
but better yet is olive oil,
most fabulous tomato foil,
especially when it is eaten
on bread that’ fresh and crisp and wheaten.

The moral of this veggie fable
is always have them on your table,
and at your leisure eat legato,
what upper classes call tomato.

Jane E. Brody wrote about lycopene in tomatoes in the NYT on March 12,1997.


3/12/97,11/22/09