A Slice of Summer
Consider this a warning from a Georgia gal, one who lives in "The Peach State." To convey my summer warning, I must share something I wrote one August afternoon. Even then it was not the official end of summer, but I could feel it, through that intuition that serves me so well. So, wherever you might live, go soon and search out the peaches. Else summer will take flight and you will have missed one of its glorious offerings.
The large, thick, silver knife made short business of the piece of fruit that it cut through, as the lady at the stand offered me a sweet slice of the succulent peach. “Have a piece,“ she urged, and I absentmindedly took it from her. I bought my tomatoes, as I always do in the summer, from the same lady I had been friends with for two or three years now. I paid and maneuvered my way back to the car with my vine-ripened wonders, a handful of change, and the slice of peach. I had decided to savor it on the way home, and as I slowly pulled out of the parking lot, I tried a taste. I held the ruby-throated sliver and bit as I felt the juice trickle down my chin. It tasted like years ago, like fruit was supposed to taste, like another time and place. It tasted like being a child again, like sipping the life blood of summer out of a delicious offering from the gods. As the peach squished in my mouth, I tasted a bouquet that can only come when summer is full-blown like a large, golden sun in the August sky. I knew that if the peaches tasted this perfect, then before long summer would start to wane. I would soon see signs of autumn about me as the landscape starts to take on its fall-like blush. Already today I had seen a maple tree that looked like it had been air brushed by the hand of God. Autumn will come, then winter-- maybe years will pass. But I knew as I ate my fruit that the memory of that one small piece of the peachy orb would linger like the taste of ambrosia, and my memories will always hark back to a little slice of summer from a friend on the side of the road.
Thanks, Sherry!
*in case you're wondering, the quote is a paraphrase of a line of Robert Herrick's "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time;" his line was instead "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may."