a peach of a peach

Like their bread & pastry, French fruit, in season, is the best I ever tasted.

The church bell beyond the garden wall tolls five times. Time for a break, but it’s not tea I want. It’s the fruit I bought from a farmer this morning that entices me; it draws me like a magnet; I can smell it from across the room. I rise from my desk & select a peach from the bowl on the kitchen table. Its temperature is the same as my hand, warm & yielding. I bite into it and juice runs down to my wrist. I don’t care, I lick it off.

How incredibly sweet & delicious! How potent its perfume! The taste brings back memories. I recall, as though it was this morning, a peach I ate for breakfast in a sunny garden in Les Baux more than 30 years ago. It was served with dignity on a plate with a knife & fork and was the first time I realized what a magnificent thing a peach is. The fruit was bursting with ripeness; it was large, sweet & juicy; its flavor intense beyond any peach I’d ever tasted before. That unforgettable essence has become my standard of how a peach should taste.

How to describe the sensation that invades my mouth and permeates all the surfaces it touches: inside of my cheeks, my lips, my tongue, my gums, my gullet. It mounts up the plumbing to my nose & spreads through my head. It’s in my chest & reaches my heart. In no time my whole body experiences the extraordinary flavor of peach that begins in my mouth. Its flesh is soft yet firm; its sweetness penetrates like a lover who possesses me completely; body & soul, tender, persistent. Without force or sense of invasion it takes over all my senses & I myself become the essence of peach.

After some time I examine the gorgeous pit in my fingers, all that remains of this ecstatic experience, and I ask myself: Was it truly an apple that tempted Adam & Eve? I think it was a ripe, juicy, irresistible peach.