One dozen rabbit’s hearts.  He laid them out carefully on a platter of burdock leaves on the close cut grass beside the asparagus bed.  He formed them into a lover’s heart shape.  The morning was crisp, the sun beginning to rise in the sky.  He waited.  The hearts waited.  The asparagus waited.  The spears were thick, each about six inches long, a repeated male expression thrusting out of mother earth.

Michael lay on the damp grass, caring for the moments that had passed to bring him to this moment.  The years when this bed of asparagus had only been an impossible glimmer in his imagination, and unspeakable desire.  He heard his mother’s voice.

“What do we want with an asparagus bed?  Waste of space.  All that effort for a few short weeks.  You know you have to wait three years before you can harvest it.  Three years.”

He knew.  And a year of preparation.  The soil must be perfect.  Very rich, no perennial weeds, no annual weed seeds.  He knew.  When he abandoned his prize leeks, and grassed over the bed, his mother had been surprised, but not displeased.  She was old now, and he could spend more time looking after her.

It was spring when his mother died.  He returned from the funeral, changed out of his funeral weeds, and dug the plot.  Single dug, simply turning over the top spit.  A fortnight later he sowed clover.  In the autumn he double dug the bed.  Proper double-digging, not bastard trenching.  He carefully removed the clover turf from the first three feet.  He dug out two spits depth of soil and wheeled it to the other end.  He broke up the soil to a third spit’s depth.  He lifted the next three feet of clover turf and placed it face down in the bottom of the open trench.  Then he added manure, half filling the hole.  The manure was twelve years old, cow manure stacked and set aside on the farm when he still kept cows.  He repeated the whole process, each time turning the soil forward.  Eleven times.  Then he replaced the turf and put the soil from the first trench into the last, and carefully levelled the bed.  He left it fallow, and completely clean of plants until the autumn.  During the year he visited a renowned asparagus grower, and selected his plants.  Twelve plants, each to be planted in a three foot square.  He excavated a large hole for each plant, and formed a mound at the bottom.  He spread the roots out evenly, so they sat like octopus on toadstools.  He filled the soil lovingly around and over the roots.  He watered the bed by hand with a two gallon can and an open rose, dousing the friable earth.  And then for two successive years he watched the spears appear, and left them to grow, strengthening the plants for the annual decimation.  Each winter he added a thick layer of the cow manure.

He heard his mother’s voice again.

“Do you think we’ve got enough rabbits?  Where are the hearts?  You haven’t thrown them away , have you?”  No mother, he thought.  No.

The sun shone.  He broke the heart into its individual components, and separated the platter into its twelve leaves.  One leaf, one heart, beside each asparagus plant.  The moment approached.  One spear from each plant.  He lay down and placed his mouth over the first spear.  He ran his tongue around it.  With his right hand he lifted the first rabbit heart.  He put it in his mouth and bit into it.  The sensation was indescribable.  He could only think of ten thousand broken hearts, like the ten thousand veils.  He let the organ slide down his throat.  Then he returned his mouth to the asparagus spear, and with a deliberate brutality bit through it.  An aroma was released, and a sweet sweet taste that perfectly counteracted the terror of the heart.  He savoured each moment, each oral sensation, chewing and swallowing with total absorption.  He was transported to every corner of his life, every memory.  It was a long time before he moved to the next heart, the next spear.  Again and again.  Heart; spear; revelation.  At last he rolled over at the end of the bed, and lay in perfect stillness, remembering the pain and the pleasure.  The succulent spears were all absorbed, but the hearts sat in his stomach, bullets in a faulty bb gun; at the slightest movement likely to vacate the chamber in rapid succession.

The sun climbed to its full height, then began its decent.  Still he lay.  He remembered his old grandfather.

“You don’t want to listen to any of his nonsense.”  His mother’s voice again.  But Michael had loved his grandfather.  Loved his stories, and above all loved this strange mystical fruit, asparagus.  “The only way to eat asparagus is to get down on your belly and bite it off, never touches anything but earth and mouth.  If you ever get the chance, Michael, you must try it.  I used to do it every year when I worked on the hill.  Used to blame it on the rabbits.  No one ever knew.”

This was the day.  His chance had come.  This childhood fantasy had grown over sixty years into this revelatory experience.  His mother’s voice began to fade.  His own voice made timid advances into his world, moving him onwards to some grander future.  He had executed his first great plan.  His body grew into a new thing, and at last he rolled over and stood beside the ravished bed.  The rabbit’s hearts, the perfect foil for the raunchy asparagus, had been Michael’s own idea.  As he watched the sun set on this dawning of days, he reflected on the suppressed passion that had lived with him all down all the years.  There were new possibilities that had never existed before.  Perhaps he would take a wife.

But first he needed to trap more rabbits.