Autumn tomato harvest as metaphor for life

The way words can never adequately convey the miracles one stumbles across and the way they can so easily be taken away.

Remember how there was so little to hold onto in the early days but so much concealed inside and underneath that I couldn’t see? The small, halfhearted start then the division, multiplication, and the branching away. Recall that I had good intentions but forgot to water things sometimes. Relationships and tomatoes suffer the same from that.
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The forgiving nature of the whole thing. That one way or another, it all works out. So many soft surprises coming slowly, slowly then rushing in all at once, the colors of jade, garnet, and coral, spread with sunshine butter and the feathers of birds.

Never enough, and I do think tomatoes can be called that, grew deep roots, reached toward the sky, and woke up one October morning heavy with fruit hidden in all the secret and dark places. It takes some work to find them.

On certain days, when the light shifts and the harvest is halfway gone, the richness and solitude sweep themselves together and place an offering at my feet. Sunshine warms my hair, which is wild and sprawling like the hedges that these tomatoes have become, and it is beautiful. I harvest with only birdsong and leaf rustle for company and know the meaning of plenty.