To a tomato plant

The squirrel, I believe it was,
chewed through half your fruit

nature not want to waste,
it left half for you, still hanging

on the vine, slowly turning a sickly
motly of brown and foaming white

(the day before, seeing the perfect flesh
round, red, and firm, I soliloquized on

how this miracle was produced by you, proud plant,
distilling dust to the muted blush of this solitary
remaining child clinging to your hands.)

Is it this or the autumnal chill that pulls
you, wilting, to give yourself back to the soil?