I’ve tried to cage it in,
my single, sprawling tomato plant
that will not be contained,
each limb branching over
metal braces that bend
and buckle with stems
heavy with fruit.

So unlike my mother
who let her scores of plants
sprawl in the dirt,
mulched with straw
under rows and rows of fruit
that she’d can in shelves
and shelves of ball jars.

At season’s end, she’d pick tomatoes green
to store on newspapers
in the cellar where they ripened
in the dark.
These unseasonal gifts we’d eat raw,
seamed with salt,
as late as November
that I still taste
as late as now.

Nancy Jesse grew up on a dairy farm in Barron County, studied English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and worked for over thirty years as an educator. Based in Madison, she has published both prose and poetry.