Small Tomato Sprawl Scrawl
SMALL TOMATO SPRAWL SCRAWL
Kindly refer to notes
We’re tomatoes [b]red together,
dependant on capricious weather
happy-go-lucky hell-for-leather
advancing, never asking whether
we’ll end in bird crop, rot, - whatever
providing seeds sprout on forever.
* * * * *
Read of the facts that history
recounts for all posterity.
Around five hundred years ago,
learn, inwardly digest, and know
cerasiforme – like a cherry –
appearance then, as tiny tree.
Columbus brought us ‘cross the sea
in fourteen hundred ninety three,
Mattioli's Herbal mentionned though
he thought us poison pomi d’oro –
gold apple – red then none could see.
We came through Spain to Italy.
Across Atlantic bravely we
sailed in the fifteenth century,
though there’s some evidence to show
that ‘stout Cortez’ from Mexico
imported us as seeds or tree
the Aztecs called xitomatli.
The Aztecs added salt, chili,
to make their salsa formerly,
as sprawling vine the tomato
advances and is wont to grow
up reaching sometimes metres three –
as many yards for backyards’ glee.
Before first cookbook recipe
Time flew with true celerity –
Two hundred years - and why so slow?
Confused with Deadly Nightshade’s glow
or Belladonna’s poison pea -
witch wolf-peach named in Germany
Book edited in Napoli
began tamed famed name followed free
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poem by Jonathan Robin
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