I love that there are figs.
I love that figs exist.
I love that figs have been preserved
to grace the plates of ancient royalists.
A day that starts with sweet
and old from orchards of Provence
means more to me than all the tea
and crumpets you might find
in fancy restaurants.
Good breakfast makes us champions
and this I do believe,
for even Richard Lionheart
from battling nasty dukes
each morning took a brief reprieve…
with crusty bread, a blob of jam,
and fresh ground chicory, he pushed
the foes of Aquitaine back to their
smarmy lairs and claimed
his figues rouges-fueled victory.
All hail therefore the mighty fig,
its Maker, and this day
where once again I’m free to choose
my battles, how to fight them—
and where not to give a frig!
~~~
© Elaine Stirling, 2016
Oceantics 
I love figs, too! Have three trees!
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I think about your fig trees often, Jane, and they were fully, happily involved in this composition. 🙂
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Lovely enthusiastic life- affirming poem Elaine! By the way, we have a fig tree here in southern England and it gives us a beautiful crop each year.
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Thanks, John! A friend had posted a photo of one of Richard’s castles while I was enjoying said jam…and voila! How lucky you are to have your own fig tree! I didn’t realize they grew in the UK.
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Not as an overall comment, only in reference to your last line.
Mano Fico (Fig Gesture)
The Mano Fico (fig hand, properly, ‘mano fica’) is an ancient obscene gesture, and is also one of the better known protective gestures against the eye. The thumb and fist gesture is an ancient representation of sexual union. The name is from the Italian word for the female vulva, fica, meaning fig (and also the origin of a well-known English obscenity).
The fig was associated by the Romans with female fertility and eroticism; the fruit was sacred to Bacchus. The gesture is used against the evil eye in the belief that an obscenity serves as a distraction to evil, even that demons are so repelled by the notion of sex and reproduction that they flee at the sign.
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Cool. Some of this I knew, some not.
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