Celtic Night Lovers

Celtic Night Lovers      
        
     I remove my frock to bathe in a spring-fed pool. But as I draw closer, I spy a woman behind the shrubbery drinking from the same pool. I approach slowly as not to a frighten her. I begin with, “Sorry to behold your nudity. Most maidens run wild as the Irish Ivy here. But you don’t seem to mind.”
     She could be any woman out of a thousand. I breathe the name she went by like the murmur of a dream. But if she is another and seduces me then woe betide me for I will have banished myself to a life with a stranger. We always find each other no matter how far apart on the planet we are born. Morning wonder sighs through my heart which throbs only for her.  
     Soon the noon sun casts its warm rays upon her bare body. Her long curly black tresses of hair fall down around her shoulders in a luxuriant canopy.
     Clouds pass over us casting shadows. The clouds are fringed with a lace of fiery golden light as they block the sun. When they pass, we are once more immersed in a bath of solar warmth. I watch silently as the sun makes its path across the sky. Soon the sun sinks below the rise of land. We are immersed in a sea of darkness. So far she shows no sign of recognition of me. If words were gold she would be a miser.  
      She gazes at her reflection in a pool illumined by the flash of fireflies as Helios dips below the horizon. Venus emerges in the night sky. It is a bright white gem shining in the east. The summer night breezes are warm and brush against my skin softly. The full moon rises above us. It casts its pale yellow light on my fevered skin. I feel warmth rise from my belly only to swell through my arms, legs, hips, and thighs. I sink into a blissful sleep.  
     The sun rises in the sky. We walk through green grass by the artesian well water. I feel the moist earth under my bare feet. I ask her, “Is your native tongue Gaelic or were you schooled in Latin by the Romans?” The only sound is birdsong. I stick my tongue out. She mimics me by pointing her tongue at me. I press my fingertip upon the tip of her tongue and repeat my question but her only response is “ahhhhh.”
     If she be the one I seek, the only way to know is to share objects which only the spirit who animated her former body would recognize. So I draw a pentagram in the mud. She grabs a stick and inscribes Avril her name from olden days. I take a stick and draw the Celtic “Trinity Knot.” Her eyes open and her soul light shines through them. Then she puts her stick down and tears form in her eyes. I don’t know whether she is crying for love or despair. My heart sinks.
     “I took liberties by gazing upon your bare body. I presumed the women here cared not a whit if men saw them naked as a shamrock in the forest. This may be the cause of your silence. You have my apologies.”
     I take her hand, hold her finger in the mud, and with it I etch ‘Cian’ in the muddy soil. She smiles like the risen sun. She repeats, “Cian, Cian, Cian.” I blush and she touches my cheek.
     She addresses me, “You surmised correctly that being naked in front of a strange man was the source of my quiet. But you are no longer a stranger. What moniker do you go by now?”  
     I reply, “Tristan is my name.”  
     The sun finds its way across the ancient path of the sky. Unlike the fireball, we do not sleep with the shades of dusk. My ascension into the heaven of her hand reveals what is no longer a secret. The trinity of my three in one manhood is engulfed in her tropic heat. With her fingers, she rings me with fire.
     Not wanting to seed her womb, I take my treasured book of spells out of my knapsack. It will serve a different purpose which she has yet to see.
     She says, “Is that book important to you? For it will be rendered asunder once put to your intended use.”
     I reply, “This is a book of spells for any occasion. I consider this to be the right one. The book is papyrus thickly rolled around a wooden rod and encased in a cotton sleeve. It should be comfortable for you.”
     She says, “Your fingernails are those of a woodsman, rough and unhewn. When my moment comes, and you will know by my vocals, I want you to pinch my bottom for being Irish and not wearing green.” Avril leads me into a thermal pool where bathing in the steamy water might give rise to offspring.
     Avril prostrates herself upon the pool shore, with her tush in the air, like a Buddhist monk in prayer. She curtsies like a bridesmaid whose wedding gift is an invitation to sightsee her backside scenery which is just inches from my face.
     Smoke from aboriginal funeral pyres rises on the horizon. The incense of burning bodies wafts on the moist breeze. The fragrance of the distant burning bodies reminds me that the flesh is fleeting like the wind or a whisper of love in the night.
     When she shifts to distribute the steamy heat from one spot to others, the blush of her hemispheres can be plainly seen and but requires a tactile sense to fully appreciate. I let her feel the book’s magic by sliding it along her Netherlands. I feel the pages unfurl beneath my fingers but firmly held in the cotton sleeve. She clenches the book between her thighs like the wand of the warlock for whom she clefts.
     “This is a book I can’t put down,” she says between gasps. Her Venus whorls until um hmm and ah become Ooh la la. Her reminder to wear green comes as promised courtesy of my claws.
     Giggles of delight are born from her burgundy lips. She says, “I am a bit drunk now, pardon my mirth.”    
     I say, “But you haven’t been drinking?”
     She replies, “The thrust of your arm was strong.
I am drunk on your manly brawn.”
     Fireflies blink on and off like stars in the Galactic night. Our little-winged lanterns illuminate the trail to a bed of moss softened more so by the welcome of a patch of clovers. She says, “Remove yourself from the premises in time and there will be no juveniles loitering in my womb.”
     She parts her legs in acceptance of the sacredness of the moment. My tender shoot sprouts only to be clothed in the leaves of her womanhood. Energy in the web of life rages between our electrified bodies. My mind dissolves into misty-eyed heat. Her femininity eclipses my masculinity. She impales herself upon my fiery Van Gogh star. The halo of the moon above shines like a heavenly crown marking our passage from one world to another.
     On the rise in the land, the flames of the funeral pyres glow as she leads me into realms of light and darkness.
     Her touch is the rich earth which nourishes my roots. Her body is the open flower craving my pollen. She opens each petal of my heart with gentle persistence and lays bare my center. She gently cradles my most secret self-holding the vulnerable egg of my deepest feelings. She tenderly strokes the nexus of my sensate swell until I sow seeds of love in the garden of her soul.
     Our floating flashbulb friends illuminate us imprinting my retinas. Our tail haloed friends blink merrily to the tune of her deep-throated warble to let me see the passion play of her face as though she were a soul rising in ecstasy from purgatory into heaven.
     And the years pass as our faces grow wrinkled.
Simple tasks fill the hours. We walk the memorized paths from seashore to our home in the hills. My life as a fisherman brings us sustenance and income. Though Avril has fished from the beach she desires to go out on a boat with me to experience for her own self offshore fishing.  
     So we take to the ocean in our currach with our crew rowing us so far out that a storm capsizes us into a grave which has no name. But my love and I find ourselves sailing a heavenly sea until we are welcomed ashore by those who went before us.  
     There, the fish swim freely as I become a farmer whose crops feed us in this new earth. One night my wife hears a knock on the door. We are told our lease on this land has expired and we must move on. There is no need to bundle our woolens as we lock up our home and part ways with the hope that the life we made together will find a new lease.