Food is life freewrite

It’s those damn kiwis, the fruit, not the Islanders, that puts my tongue all in a twist. I love their burlap exterior against a jade green mandala, and that aroma, almost strawberry, almost passionfruit, but my tongue objects, turns into an object de art, swollen along the taste buds, inflamed. Bitter and salty buds objecting to the acrid tang of the kiwi from down under. Call them Chinese gooseberries if you want, but but they are more like burlap testicles hanging from the vine. Who would've guessed all that greenness hid beneath that all that burlap? A neighbor I worked for, Alice Kent ,delighted in the rare and the unusual. One of my jobs was to check on the progress of the kiwi vine spanning the trellis. I delighted in the creamy blossoms, a cross between a blackberry and a magnolia, all porcelain and cream. Strange progeny of fruit to follow left the tomatoes girlishly gasping at the stud fruit hanging from the trellis. The roses got all huffy and pulled up their stocks and took to the road, unable to cope with that upstart vine from down under. I remember one full moon, the siren call of the garden led me down to the pond barefoot where the water iris had open their triumvirate arms to the moon. I was so mesmerized, I stumbled into the pond to pluck that alabaster light from the stems. My bare arms were calyxes beneath the moonlight. Having no knife and their resistance to plucking got the better of me, so my teeth severed blossom from the stem, sweet juice like corn on the husk, this food of life for the soul, for the tongue, for Isis.

2/18/2005 Writers’ Group