Tomatoes
(for Lorna Crozier)

Used widely
in toothbrush commercials
tomatoes are stars.
They cannot travel
from one garden salad to another
without being asked
for their autograph.

Although they bear
a resemblance to apples
they are individualists.
Robust and rotund,
a tomato ignores
society’s pressure
to look like a carrot.

Tomatoes baffle scientists
and confuse the hell
out of dieticians;
for when asked politely
“Are you a vegetable or a fruit?”
tomatoes just grin
and throw themselves at you.

Katy Gilliam