holy fig

Today I woke early and drifted, heavy-footed, into the garden to take in the chill of the air before the sun crept over the fence and the heat haze took hold.  It is my favourite time of day.  Where the midday sun flattens, the morning light brights the world into sharper relief.  Even flavours seems to leap out with the newness of the day.  A mug of strong black coffee sits at my left hand, billowing steam into the unripe air.  A ripe fig, its flesh yielding at the pinch of a thumb, sits at my right.  I had never been interested in figs: the fig leaf of modesty, fig rolls staling in a biscuit tin, beige-brown dried figs gritty with seeds, the biblical fig.   But I am converted.  Inside its dull matte monk's habit of purple and green:  a shock of pink, hundreds of seeds suspended in revelation, a halo of white flesh encircling them.  It is a fuschia starburst, a flash of light in the morning.  The fig tastes green yet sweet, it tastes of all the aromatic freshness of dawn.  It's an epiphany.

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Later in the day I come back for more.  I quarter the fig with long cuts from top to bottom, crumble over some mild goat's cheese and grind black pepper over lot.  I don't bake the fig, I don't grill the fig, I don't drown it's scented sweetness with honey.  I eat it, greedily.  It's a summer snack to plant seeds of doubt in even the most stubborn of unbelievers.