Blossom-End Rot

Yellow tomato blossoms shrivel to fruit.
Grape-green, long globes dangle
along a vine, a promise, till unknown lack
flattens flesh brown. Hope and time don’t help.
Poems drop the bloom, rot their ends,
never meant to redden. Give up on them.
They’ll waste the plant with worry, regret.
You can’t share poems red but half dead.
Why bother slicing off the salvaged shoulders
to savor your failure alone? Pluck and toss them
small over the rail. Research, fertilize
with powdered fish, love-crushed bones
the dog licks from the pot. Still, here comes
the button-sized rot. There goes the thought.