First Figs

Early yesterday morning I harvested the first two figs of the season. They tasted fabulous. I might have written a poem about them, but then I discovered someone else had beaten me to it... after lunch, I found this poem, First Fig, by Allison Elrod...

The fig tree has spread its generous
canopy across my late summer side yard.
Its branches are heavy with fruit.

Every day now, the figs grow softer
and fuller; they are taking the rain
and the warmth
of a hundred summer days
and making them over into pleasure;
taut green skin and soft pink flesh.

Wearing only my nightgown
and my work boots,
I have come outside at dawn
like some post-modern Eve,
yearning for a taste of the fruit of the tree.
I reach up into the branches,
reach up for the fruit
that hangs just beyond my reach,
the fig whose skin is just beginning
to bear the flush of readiness.

Maybe I am Eve. After all,
isn’t the light in my garden
still what came of
"Let there be light?"
And isn’t everything to come
in human history beginning
on this very day,
this very morning,
when this very fig—the one I am holding in my hand—is finally ripe?
Or maybe, I am
a middle-aged woman outside
in my nightgown at six a.m.—
filled with happiness so pure it feels
like innocence—savouring the sweetness
of summer’s first ripe fig
before the light shifts,
before history resumes,
before I come inside to wake you,
temptation on my mind.

To be strictly accurate, I ought to admit that I was in the shower, when I suddenly remembered I needed to check my figs, and I really couldn't wait. I wrapped myself in a large bath towel, slipped on my sandals, and ran out into the back garden. I was wearing only slightly more clothes than Eve  [It's OK, our neighbours are away at the moment, nobody could see me]