The Smell of a Ripe Tomato

June 1 2016

The smell of a ripe tomato,

plucked from its vine

in the torpid heat

of high summer.

You hold it up to the nose, almost touching,

like a connoisseur

sampling expensive wine.

Inhaling, with his eyes half-closed,

then swirling and watching

and slurping and sloshing

and chewing and jawing

unselfconsciously

despite how foolish he looks,

absorbing every molecule

without swallowing a drop.

You can be a literalist

and reduce it to prose;

sweet, savoury, tart …

an earthy essence …

its green herbaceous stem.

Or resort to poetry

and say no more,

because the reader very well knows

how a ripe tomato smells.

As if grunting a small approving noise

and offering it up.

Because language cannot capture this.

Its rough approximations

are hardly adequate,

while meticulous detail

just erects a wall of words

pushing you further apart.

The smell of a ripe tomato

still warm from the sun,

a sticky dribble of juice

the blend of sweet and tart.

One soft slippery seed

caught between your teeth,

tonguing it absent-mindedly

until the basket’s filled.

I was wondering what to write when I passed the kitchen window, tomatoes ripening on the ledge:  the smell of a ripe tomato, of course.

Which became the title …and says all that needs to be said.

I’ve often talked about this – not only when discussing poetry, but in the actual content of some of my poems:  wondering what it is that differentiates poetry from prose; appealing to expressions like “less is more” …“show it, don’t say it” …“let the reader do the work”.

When I began writing, I loved piling on description:  like circling a diamond in changing light, and commenting on every facet. Now, with a few key words, I just try to point the reader in the right direction:  because writing is more powerful when the reader invokes her own experience; because poetry is stronger when it’s distilled, condensed, compressed.

Language is what distinguishes us as humans. I can’t imagine any kind of sophisticated cognition or abstract thought without it. But still, all language is essentially metaphor, and it is at best approximate. Words fail us. Words can obfuscate as much as clarify. Words have different nuances and connotations, depending on the reader. We aren’t always attentive listeners.

So this poem is a commentary on the inadequacies of language. I say as much, in the 2^nd last stanza. But I think -- by showing it, rather than saying it – I express this better in the final one. Instead of being reductive and analytical, trying to reproduce the smell of a ripe tomato through words (words like sweet, savoury, tart), the final stanza is all experiential and multi-sensory:  it invokes the reader’s own experience. Because this is how we remember things:  not as the sum of parts, but as an organic whole.

So in a sense, the poem is laughing at its own pretension: an entire page of words, when the title says it all in the first place, just as well!