Picking a pomegranate is not as easy as it seems. That leathery skinned fruit doesn’t cry out to be plucked like a ripe peach or fall from the tree, as figs do, begging to be eaten. No, Israel’s promised fruit must be carefully, cautiously taken. The tree’s branches, with pencil sharp end points, scratch the reaching hand; the price of getting at the shiny, crowned red fruit.

With a tree at my new California house heavy with ripe fruit, I’ve been thinking a lot about pomegranates as I pick and eat my way through more of them in a month than I’ve had in my whole life’s consumption. What was once a special occasion fruit is now a daily reflection and pleasure. I’ve use pomegranates in jelly, juice, smoothies, sprinkled them on salads, in spring rolls served them with roasted eggplant and yogurt sauce tucked into pitas, and always fresh from the peel, as fast as I can peel, out of hand. I’ve peeled and eaten and eaten. Short of the work of peeling, they are they are the kind of fruit I don’t tire of. Perhaps it is the packaging, each little jewel-like aril must be plucked individually, each one a miniature bite of sweet-sour splendid. So much flavor so tightly bound in each bite and so many in each fruit.

Enriching the pungent pop of each little aril, pomegranates bear the depth of religious significance in many faith traditions.  They were a promise and reward for the exodus from Egypt, the adornment for temple vestibules and raiment. Their juice bleeding flesh conjures remembrance of Christ’s atonement. Jewish tradition holds that they contain as many seeds as the Torah. A symbol of fertility, the beauty and abundance of their carefully bound seeds signify the continuation and gift of life. Some hold that this biblical fruit was the fruit of our first parents.

Looking down at my hands stained and roughened from prying, peeling and picking pomegranates I don’t hesitate to speculate too. Perhaps it was the pomegranate our first parents pulled from that tree. Unlike a soft skinned fruit, it couldn’t be carelessly plucked and bitten. Pomegranates don’t fall from the tree, they grow right on to the branch, sturdy and sure and strong. To lay hold of the fruit, the picker must pull, twist, and wrench at the fruit to break it from the branch (pruning shears work nicely, too).

While the retellings of that garden scene are myriad, amuse my while I entertain my own:

Eve reaches through the thorny branches, clasping the beguiling red fruit so large it requires two hands.  Picking is arduous; she’s pricked by the tree, but continues wanting to release it and weigh it in her hands. While she began tentatively, she increases in determination pulling, twisting, and yanking at the bulb until that two-edged tree relinquishes. Unable to to predict the effect of her effort, Eve stumbles back  in surprise as the branch whips back to place, unburdened by the weight of the fruit as the fruit falls, cracking on the ground. Eve then picks it up examining the thick shiny flesh, now split, with pith stained with scarlet spilt juice. Uncertain, but almost unconsciously she licks it as it spills onto her fingers: surprisingly pungent, sour and sweet; wonder full and strong. She longs for more than a taste.

Consciously now, she carefully works past the bitter pith, peeling while the juices color her fingers and flesh purple-red. Her labors reveal the pattern of jeweled seeds. She picks up an aril and puts it to her lips. Oh, beautiful fruit.

An answer. An promise. A purpose. A cost.

Knowingly now she plucks out the seeds and eats.

Anxious. Eager.  She picks up the fruit in her battered, stained hands  and runs to share.

I never thought it was an apple anyway. What would you speculate? Or just share what you like to do with pomegranates. I still have the top half of a tree to pick.