One Bite of the Pear

Birds singing after the rain. The breeze is toying with the trees again, reaching between the branches like a devilish cad laying those ladies low. The supple apples arch their backs like women caught in the last high kick of a tango. The rose tips kick the short neat kicks of a can-can girl. The dark-leafed crab shoots, girlfriends in a crowd of screaming fans, wave in unison at the pop idol up on stage. The garden swoons, seduces, swoons. All the while the breeze plies its caddish trade in titillation. It will leave them, when the fun is spent, and who will they tell, the girlfriends silent now in solidarity. The dancers unmade up, putting their glistening costumes to bed.
Dalliance. The elements tease and please and depart each other’s company. The breeze allures by touch, the trees by sound and sight – the red leaves glistening bright, the green leaves blushing pink at the tip, all of them whisper and sush. “All things allured God to make them.” wrote the poet Thomas Traherne. Desire is at the heart of things. No serpent I expect was needed to tempt our mother Eve. The apple’s own plump perfection, the blush on its cheek, its smooth dappled skin, its satisfying crunch, the promise of its scent -- all these would have sufficed. Temptation enough in the nature of the thing to make one want to pluck, and palm and taste.
My three year-old knows this. She cruises the fruit bowl fingering each fruit, weighing apples in her two small palms, feeling the hairy bristles of the kiwi, the thin bruisable skin of the pear. Her touch incarnadines the nectarine’s blush. She samples everything. She takes a bite, then puts it back. Plucks a grape satisfyingly from its stalk and bursts its juice in her happy mouth. When I enter the room she starts, looks guiltily at me for her sentence. Sometimes I banish her from the garden, send her crossly to sit on the stairs, angered by the waste of food. Sometimes I do not. Because there is a real pleasure in the pluck of a grape, because I remember that one bite of the pear is all one ever wanted.