Return of the Green Tomato

A handful of green tomatoes were given to me by my Dad
who had some yellowing on a window sill at home.
'Time, and they will go all the way from green to red', he said.
He put them in carrier bag, transparent, to give them that
green house effect, and advised me to do what he had done.
That very night with care
I placed them outside on my window sill
to ripen in the morning sun.
Next day they had completely, without trace, vanished.
I thought, perhaps, a bird or fox had carried them away.
I would miss out completely on them going from
green to yellow to orange to red. Not in this life would I see it.
I accepted this until that very night, arriving home from work like everyman,
I found that bag returned. Simply left out on my doorstep .
They were just as I'd last seen them but not quite:
Three had yellowed and two were well on their way to going orange.
The one I liked the best had a split, a wound
landed in some fall or fight, a gash
right across it's twisted hair once something of a vine.
It looked like a scowl but sometimes like a smirk.
I had to chuck it out, into the rubbish, still green.
Pausing just before I put a lid on it, nestled amongst
potato peelings, beer bottles and broken egg shells,
I noticed how, already, it had gone brown
around the edges of its ruptured skin.
Then there was that tomato that went red,
who I hated immediatelly, and ate with a little salt.