Jerry Krajnak
Hope
My final tomato vine froze last night
after it waged quite a fight,
surviving a long season of drought,
then too much rain, fusarium wilt,
powdery mildew, stinkbugs, aphids,
fruitworms, frass, and, yes, neglect,
its final fruit, picked green and hard,
asleep in newsprint under my bed,
waiting for a winter day
when I’ll fry bacon, make some toast,
and taste, I hope, a bit of sunshine.
Jerry Krajnak, a former altar boy and a Vietnam veteran who went on to survive forty years in public school classrooms, gardens and writes poetry in the North Carolina mountains.