Echo of Summer

Echo of Summer

    While walking down Decatur Street, I see a woman lying in the grass in Jackson Square. She fascinates me. The freedom of youth sweeps me away and so I watch her.
     It is a bright sunny September day. There are cool breezes off the river as she lays in her summer dress, with her thighs and back bare, and sunbathing in the grass. My view is of her lying on her side while looking across the fresh green grass at the bright orange marigolds which fill her little corner of Jackson Square.
     She looks up at the black iron fence which borders the marigolds. I look up and see huge cottony clouds which float high like islands in the sky in the deep blue heavens. They cast shadows on the patch of grass upon which she luxuriates. As they pass over I feel the warmth of sunshine kisses on my face. But my peeping Tom’s eyes gaze upon her with her hips and legs sunk into the soft bed of grass as though she is in the hands of an expert lover.
     I watch her run the palms of her hand over the blades of grass and feel like joining her. I begin to feel aroused sexually by the pleasure from this scene of visionary enchantment. Like her, I have always felt most erotically charged in nature. There is nothing more stimulating to me than being in a quiet place under the sky to feel the sun or rain on my body. I watch as a dark grey cloud forms over me. The air begins to grow cooler and I feel goosebumps form on my skin. But I am too mesmerized by her to seek shelter. She lies there and gazes at the marigolds.
     Soon, tiny raindrops begin to tickle my face. She lies there bathed in the drizzle and I feel the cool water invigorate me. Her dress begins to get damp and sticks to her body. I begin to shiver. She gets up and walks through the light rain to Pirate’s Alley.  
     She was the main attraction but I notice that the park blossoms with maidens in summer dresses. The New Orleanian afternoon is dipped in a tangerine sun with the grassy park a pleasure garden where lasses and lads languorously lie.
     I traverse Decatur Street with my emerald eyes attuned to feminine beauty. Out of the blue, a lady with a German accent intercepts me. “Sir I’m going to have to give you a ticket,” she says. “But don’t worry. It isn’t for jaywalking or anything.” Her plea for a donation to a woman’s shelter is granted.
     She has me hold out my hand and affixes a smiley face sticker to my skin. “That’s for girl watching. You can look but don’t touch.”
She power walks away.
     I am bewildered and call to her, “What did you say?”
     “You heard me” is her gruff repartee with me busted.
      The aura of feminine beauty overcomes my guilt and I make my way to the Canal Street where a warm and dry streetcar waits to whisk me to Audubon Park where sunbathing beauties are the wildflowers I seek.
     I approach a ticket vending machine to buy my passage to a nature gallery of models whose artistry outdoes a painting on a wall. A songstress glides into my space with graceful ballerina steps. She is a petite elfin chanteuse who proceeds to feed the ticket machine her coins for me with her soprano singing reverberating.
     Her cryptic message is deciphered by me as I hand her a fiver. She swishes away in her dress with her song fading into the transmigration of souls. The trolley rumbles past me with my last fare gone to the lady whose song took me for an enchanting ride.