41 Comments
User's avatar
Kathryn Benander's avatar

At least something good has come from climate change!

Expand full comment
KathT's avatar

You have so well captured our love.

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

Thank you. I hope your love always makes you good BLTs!

Expand full comment
Steve Lovelace's avatar

I love the way you can make the ordinary (I'm not calling the BLT ordinary, just the sandwich making process) extraordinary. Thank you Sherman, I am also grateful the fallow lasted only a short time.

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

Thank you, Steve.

Expand full comment
Arjan Tupan's avatar

Such a beautiful ode. You are a lucky man (and a great writer).

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

Thank you, Arjan.

Expand full comment
Pamela Murphy's avatar

Oh! Yes indeed!

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

Thank you, Pamela.

Expand full comment
Kathryn Benander's avatar

A beautiful tribute--to love, your wife, and her gardening skill!

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

The strange warm weather has caused the tomatoes to bloom again—the beauty arising from unwanted climate change.

Expand full comment
Luci Householder's avatar

Home grown tomatoes are so special and delicious. Sharing them garners long lasting friendships as well. I wish I could hear you read this ode, but the device wasn’t functioning.

I shall remain on the vine awaiting the next muse’s message.

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

Thank you, Luci. I don't know why the voice didn't work for you.

Expand full comment
Annie's avatar

What's more beautiful than a tantalizing tomato, with its fierce color and sweet juice, and especially one grown with love which seeps from the caretaking hands into the soil and back into the flesh of the tomato making it even more succulent? ... roses might be more beautiful to some but they're thorned in self defense, while the tender tomato has no defense, just surrenders to the salivary glands. Enjoy your feast in love and gratitude! Have you read Pablo Neruda's ode to a tomato? I think he wrote one to an artichoke, too, but the tomato has my heart.

🍅🍄🥑

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

I will search out Neruda's tomato poem. I've done my best to avoid being a dude who quotes Neruda!

Expand full comment
Stephanie Cox's avatar

My husband and I have an ongoing joke about how much we love BLTs and we have a few tomatoes plants so this one made me smile and bop my head in delight. And our bread is predictably great too, but the tomatoes...!

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

You bopped your head! Awesome!

Expand full comment
Marcia Lovelace's avatar

One of the best things about poetry is the way it reveals that nothing is really "unremarkable".

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

Yes, I agree.

Expand full comment
Eunice M. Flanders's avatar

Love it! I am teaching the ode next week and add this to the list we read!

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

Thank you for including me in your lessons!

Expand full comment
Ann-Marie Stillion's avatar

❤️❤️❤️

I especially love how you bring us around to hearing the word wedding. That it can be present, in the moment.

This poem was an instance where your recitation made it happen. I read it but then listened. The voicing made all the difference in meaning.

On this otherwise unremarkable Friday, I will gently feast on the weddings in my life.

Here’s to weddings, where ever we find them.

It makes me want to cry with happiness.

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

Oh, it makes me so happy when a reader sees how I architected one word!

Expand full comment
Yelling at Clouds's avatar

aww. And THAT is how you get her to keep bringing you blt sammiches! Love rules.

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

Hahahahahaha! I shall make her salmon and asparagus!

Expand full comment
Yelling at Clouds's avatar

Good call.

Expand full comment
Maria's avatar

How lovely!!!

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

Thank you, Maria.

Expand full comment
tridukes's avatar

Finally! The BLT doesn't get the praise it deserves. We have discovered the joys of the BLTA (avocado).

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

I have a tenuous relationship with avaocado. So unpredictable in its ripeness.

Expand full comment
tridukes's avatar

Yes, unpredictable -- even fickle -- fruits but, as is the nature of such beings -- at times -- surprisingly rewarding, just when you have given up on them.

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

Avacados are kinda human!

Expand full comment
tridukes's avatar

Ain't it so!

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment deleted
Oct 7, 2022
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

If you say BLTA aloud it rhymes with buttah.

Expand full comment