Spring Has Sprung

Spring Has Sprung    
   
    Marsha and I lay on the yellow sandy creek beach looking at the pink glow of sunrise in the eastern sky.  She reclines on her side facing me. I am supine in the sublimity of spring. We are both twenty and too old for wading in the creek. But spring has sprung and the desire to get more than our feet wet is strong. Marsha’s irises are azure as glacial ice. Her complexion is that of French vanilla. Her hair is like fine corn silk which lusters in the summer sun. Her hair giggles when she walks.  
     At St. Catherine Creek the water appears on fire and sparkles in the early morning sunlight. The red clay bluffs, which tower over the opposite bank, are suffused with rosy pastel dawn light.  
     Puffs of mist slowly roll across the water which trickles over pebbles. The forest around the creek is alive with the chirping of crickets and tree frogs.  
     We bare it all for the sake of starched shirt humanity in the hopes that one day they may join us. She says, “Our pairing off affords a wider range of recreation than a conventional nudist colony.”  
She plucks a clump of field horsetail and briskly brushes my back to the seat of my absent swim trunks. This sends my tender skin into a baptismal sun of smolder. She says, “This exfoliates your dry skin. Why go to a spa when you have me?”  
     She continues, “Care for a cough drop?” I pop her offering into my mouth.  
     “My favorite flavor, orange.”  
     She grabs me by the hair and makes love to my mouth with her tongue. She asks, “How did that feel for you?”  
     “When you penetrated my mouth with your tangy tongue your taste splashed into me like freshly squeezed satsumas.”  
     “Now, let’s suck on the lemon cough drops from my purse. Kiss me you fool! Now, how did that feel?”    
     I say, “You felt creamy and citrusy like my first taste of lemon meringue pie.”  
     “With homemade lemon custard made from scratch,” she asserts. “Your kiss tasted like rainbow sherbet melting in my mouth” she attests.  
     Cicadas sing while she sucks on Red Hots candy pieces from her purse. When she kisses me her tongue is laced with the fire of a feminine arson.  
      I say to her, “Tell me where the hand of God is in this merciless world.” Her answer is to bestride me with the strength of a lion but the gentleness of a lamb. Her muscles are sinewy as a puma but her skin is soft as a newly blossomed magnolia petal. There is a Florida freedom in her eyes where her Pensacola of the heart becomes a spring break paradise. My heart longs to hole up in a condo with her by the beach far from the maddening crowd. But this swath of sand is our Santa Rosa Island. And here we contend like ancient Greek wrestlers. But instead of a spotless lyceum floor, our arena is a mud-caked creek bed where nature holds sway to our delight.     
     We wade barefoot through the cool water. We sit on the submerged creek bed. Marsha’s legs are parted in a weir. The flow makes her Venus-plats quake like aspen. I give her a hand up.  
     “Did you hear the song of the mockingbird from the shrubbery as he celebrated our joy with us?”  
     “Pray tell, how did you know it was a male?”  
     “You silly man. Males sing more frequently and with a much wider variety of vocals. In fact, this one mimicked me when my voice reached cruising altitude and switched over to autopilot. Maybe he was courting me? Tell me plainly do you think the mimicker’s purpose was to mock me or woo me?”  
    “If I were he my intentions would be the latter, but enough of this avian chatter.”  
    “Your eyes are turning green with envy.”  
     When Marsha does her yoga it becomes readily apparent that her body intrigues me like one of those perfect Pythagorean forms must have intrigued the ancient Greeks.  
     Marsha does her stretching and breathing exercises. She tells me, “Never push your body hard in yoga. That will only give you a pulled muscle. Give your body time to become supple. Remember yoga makes life easier for yourself and those around you. I can greet the sun with my yoga squats in my birthday suit to simultaneously perk you up for the day and tone my body which is a gift to us both.”  
     I say, “Your stances are better than coffee to start my day.”  
     I tell her, “Let’s do more than play around here. Let us create art.”  
     She replies, “I don’t know where you’re going with this but I am intrigued.”  
     I answer, “OK here is the plan. I will paint a replica of a famous artwork on your derriere. Then you will do the same on mine. Are you up for it?”  
     “Well, the most art I’ve done is finger painting when I was young. So I can’t promise anything artistic in any sense of that word.”  
     I wade across the creek and return with a big clump of red clay in my hands. I say, “Just stand still. If nothing else you may enjoy the sensation of my fingers drawing shapes on your posterior.”  
     I kneel behind her with a pinch of clay between my fingers. She is motionless as though mesmerized by the feel of me tracing swirls upon her skin. For just a moment her bottom quivers perhaps from nervousness or maybe excitement I can’t tell which. But the moment passes and she regains her composure. Images take shape under my fingertips upon the canvas of her skin. I add layer upon layer to the painting as she says, “How will I see your sketch?”  
     I say, “I brought my Instamatic in my knapsack.”  
     She replies, “Maybe we can sell it as a replica.”  
     I say, “The market for this image lies elsewhere than art collectors.”  
     She says, “Will appeal to fetishist everywhere.”  
     I retrieve the camera and take a snapshot. She gets excited and says, “You painted Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ on my bottom!”  
     I reply, “Well I got the swirling patterns alright. I am thrilled that you recognized my source.”  
     “OK, my turn. I’ll surprise you too.”  
     I hand her the rest of the clay and she falls to her knees behind me. Her tracery upon my skin feels like when a girl drew her name upon my hand with a pen. The lines move across me like cursive writing. It feels like she is writing a love note upon my cheeks which only she can read as of yet. The letter O rolls with her quill fingers around the curve of my buns with the dexterity of a calligrapher. Her fingernails scrape my tenderness with surety. She punctuates her work by pressing her sharpness into the middle of my tush. She says, “All done. Now for the pic.” She squats and takes a close up.  
     She holds the impression up for me to behold. I say, “I see circles with a dot in the middle. You were telling me earlier about what a Monet fan you are. So I would guess his ‘Water Lilies.’”  
     She replies, “If you hadn’t guessed right I’d have divorced you.”  
     I say, “You’re kidding me.”  
     She replies, “Of course I’m pulling your leg. How could I break up with a guy who picked me up off the road and didn’t expect to get in my pants? You are a rare bird.”  
     “Good to know the ice I’m skating on isn’t that thin. In fact, it is thick. Have you ever had to refrain from something you really enjoyed for the sake of not getting caught?”  
     “When I was in high school my girlfriends and I were part of a secret society of Wiccan practitioners. One day my little sister noticed I had a pentagram tattoo on my thigh. She also told Mom that I had a voodoo doll. It was a pin cushion for goodness sakes! She told Mom that I was practicing voodoo, Mom told my priest, and the hullabaloo began. I explained to Mom that the pincushion was for my home education class where I was learning to do alterations. Mom said ‘Your grandmother would be proud to know you are learning to sew. It is a tradition for the women of our family.’ Mom explained the misunderstanding to Father Michael and he answered that Wiccan was a lesser blasphemy than voodoo. However, in his book, it was still witchcraft. So my penance was abstinence from my witchy ways and no pizza for a month.”  
      I say, “What if we refrained from naked romps in the woods for a while?”
     She replies, “This has been on my mind too. We’ve been lucky not to get in trouble out here. But I have something in mind which will restore our freedom. The key is to migrate. The south isn’t very open to naked folks gallivanting around naked as jaybirds. We need to head west.”  
     “You are a better orienteer through the pine barrens of life than me. So if your compass needle points us west, I follow.”  
     “John, the park ranger is coming out of the woods. My Mom would be mortified if he reported my indecent exposure, made all the worse by being with a naked man. John, he will be here any minute.  
What do we do now?”  
     I instruct, “Well, let me do the talking when he arrives. You get hysterical in these situations which is typical of women.”  
     “Sometimes I think sexism and chivalry are one and the same. You carry yourself as blue blood which is all the more reason that you are in need of  
a lesson in humility.”  
     “Please, my regal nature abhors such treatment, especially from a woman.”  
     “Only a woman can teach you to respect the fairer sex. If ever any man needed a female tutor in a courteous speech to women that man is you.”  
     “Oh, Mr. Park Ranger we just had to whiz. We thought we were alone here.”  
    The ranger says, “I never expected to be mooned out here. An elderly couple just pulled in with a bumper sticker saying, ‘Jesus saves.’ You folks were lucky.”      
     Marsha says, “I’m sorry you had to witness this sordid affair. I promise you, good sir, never to treat this nature preserve as a nudist colony again.” She bites her bottom lip and laughs in hiccups.