making love is not all about sex you know…

today it is picking beans and the day before and the day before,

purple king beans dangling purple strips hiding among the green heart-shaped leaves of the vine.

stretching up the wallaby proof fence and onto the possum proof roof of our garden.

after 20 plus years we folded succumbed or got smart and erected an enclosure to garden within to keep out our neighbours that love to eat what we eat .

not so our fruit trees, laden as they are or have been with peaches and nectarines and apples, of this we will taste none .

the possums have the numbers and we their humble providers.

once we ate of our trees, once we bottled and puddinged and jammed and scoffed and now the orchard has disappeared into a wattle forest.

the fruit trees around the house are the wild ones growing up from children thrown pips a mecca for the birds and possums.

we ate one once, a possum. delicious .

ok look at me weird you cow eater you devourer of chicken you vegetarian,

that likes all your food sanitised and wrapped disassembled from reality,

different when you get the hook out of the fishes mouth or when you skin and gut your dinner.

I am blessed to live with a hunter and he offers it to me already prepared .

but I have seen livers and intestines, I have seen fishes eggs and snail waste; I have not been hiding indoors all these years away from the intimate relationship between body and sustenance.

how is it we live on a planet and forget that our food is sourced from the earth?

how is it that the factory and plastic wrapped is ok and the blood and dirt on our hands is disgusting?

give me the earth under my nails any day.

give me the beans freshly picked, boiled and now baking gently in the oven in oil garlic chilli with tomato and feta.

oh yes give it to me.

give me the breath of this forest in my veges

give me the suns warmest blessing and the rains staccato burst and the pips and whistles of the birds that I devour in each mouthful.

and what about the salad I will pick now the leaves of lettuce of chicory of endive of rocket and mizuna, of beetroot and carrot, of basil and parsley and chives tossed with marigold and borage flowers.

give me this deep experience of making my lunch happen measured in footsteps not miles.

making love is not all about sex you know

making love is a communion

all things desire to commune with us.

it is just a matter of letting go really,

allowing the sun to caress the rain to tease

allowing the body to ripen and open and deepen

allowing our selves to be intimate

with our selves with earth with life