Now you are making me laugh and remember.
We had a peach tree next to our septic tank.
Over the years the tree had dug its roots
well and truly right into the good muck.
.
The taste of those peaches! Hot and sweet!
Many in the village would come and beg
for a bucket of the good peaches, the peaches
shaped like buttocks, with a pink flush.
.
I would try to (tastefully) tell them exactly why
the flavour was so excellent – You are eating us.
Our ordure, our guano. But it never put them off.
It was a clingstone peach with a golden flesh.
.
The rosellas and the bowerbirds would get drunk
and disorderly on the ripe fruit up in the boughs.
I would climb – go eyeball to eyeball with them -
reach out a hand and slap them out of the tree.
.
Then the Council told us to get a new system
and damn! Those peaches weren’t as golden.
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Tags: Jennifer Compton
