Wild-Fig Season
Autumn is giving way to winter.
On the trees that line one section of the park we walk in, of a morning, the wild figs have ripened by the thousands. Bats and nocturnal creatures feast and frolic among them at night: birds, during the day. The paved walkway and the grass beneath the trees are covered with what fruits the birds drop, and the overripe ones that drop naturally.
Ripe figs, their seeds spilling, out carpet the area.
And now it is time for another creature to feed.
Butterflies!
By the hundreds and thousands — -and this is no hyperbole — -they flit and float and feast on these fallen figs. If one is not careful while walking there, one might step on one of them. The sun rises around 6.15, and by 7 he is well on his way up the sky and the patch of the fallen figs is lighted up like a beacon. The butterflies are almost every colour and shape and size. If we stand still even for a moment, they alight in a cloud around us, and are busy feeding.
It is like a veritable carpet of light-laden iridescence.
And yet, the walkers are so lost in their mobiles, that they barely see the magic around them.
But. Children have begun coming to the Park now.
And when I stand and watch the wonder and delight in their eyes, at what is unfolding before them, I tell myself, like Robert Browning, that ‘God’s in His Heaven, All’s right with the world!’
A world with babies and butterflies can’t be all bad, can it?
