Fruit Fridge Fantasy - the mango and the durian

I opened the fridge at work
and inside
was the most sweet warming swell
of tropical fruit
It fluttered into my belly
reminding me, like the ghost of christmas past
of an abundance of mangoes
hot days and sticky fruits and christmas on the farm
days spent picking the yellow mounds of flesh from trees
flicking the stem away so the sap didn't drip
cleaning them in big concrete tubs
boxing them
so many boxes
the panoply of oranges, red, yellows
and a flitter of green
hot hot summer christmas days at our second farm
picking mangoes by the sweat of day
and sleeping on high high spare beds
in our confusing ramshackle bare haunted farmhouse
that only saw us on holidays and mustering weekends
my sister would always have her birthday while we were there
we would play hide and seek under mountains of mattresses
I would talk to Bessie, the farmhouse cow
who lived on the gnarled branches of a poinsettia tree

The fresh sweet smell of tropical fruit...
taking me back too
to the summer of my independence
18, fresh from school, travelling alone in Malaysia
the green jungle
the decaying fruit mounds by the side of the winding roads
the durian
heavy prickly breast of fruit
cleavered open by a cane knife
sucking the yellow custard textured flesh
of large brown seeds
whole days were spent in the quest of durian with my malaysian host families
it smells like hell, but tastes like heaven
in the villages the durian were plentiful
1 ringgit
in the city they were found in the markets
more expensive
but families would buy them as a special treat
and around the tiled kitchen floor we gathered
kneeling on our haunches
suckling on the nationalistic fruit
the sweet sweet smell
the durian shop in the mega shopping mall - a board outside which read
Durian is an aphrodisiac - when the durian season is in, the sarongs are up!
the fruit kebab stores at the mall
everywhere the smell
of tropical fruit

and now in the cool of a concrete tower
in canberra
during winter
i am taken back by the ghost of christmases past
to a farmhouse in bowen
and the jungle of malaysia

the mangoes and the durian