When She Passes Before Him

When She Passes Before Him

     The alarm clock goes off. He opens his eyes, squints, and turns off the alarm. He flexes his toes, stretches his arms, and yawns. He throws the sheets off his body, feels cold, and lies there, watching his chest rise and fall. He sits up and his feet touch the cold linoleum floor. He walks into the bathroom and sees his placid face in the mirror.
     John spreads cool menthol shaving cream on his whiskered cheeks. He carefully runs his shaver across the contours of his face, around his cheekbones, his jaw, chin, and lips. He washes his face with cold water. Then he slaps aftershave on.
His cheeks feel chilly. He combs his hair with a brush and feels pain when pulling the tangles out.
     John puts on his robe and goes to the living room where he opens the front door. He squints in the bright sunlight while picking up the newspaper. He walks to the kitchen, puts the paper on the table and the kettle on the burner. He sits at the table and reads about Syria.  
     The kettle whistles, so he pours tea and puts in a teaspoon of sugar. He sips the hot tea. His tongue gets a little burned. He reads the whole newspaper and feels sad for the world. He turns on the TV and watches a game show. A girl wins a new car and she jumps up and down, screaming, ecstatic.  He turns off the TV.
     John sits in his recliner and listens to the clock tick-tock. His heartbeats, as the moments of his life rush by. He puts on his clothes and straightens his collar. He walks out into the cool fall air and sees children waiting in line to get on a school bus. He wishes he was a child again.
     He walks into the corner drug store and gets Time magazine. While checking out the cashier says to him, “John, you going home to solve the problems of the world?” He nods. He sees laughing teenage girls walk past as he walks out the door.
     He walks home and lies on the recliner while watching sitcoms on TV. He feels pain in his chest and sighs.
     A voice from the kitchen chimes to him. “John, you fell asleep with the TV on again. Do I have to make the trip to earth each time to remind you?”
     Rowena speaks from the television saying, “We are interrupting your regular programming for a special announcement. Come with me or maybe I should bring heaven to you.” The TV beams a crystal blue light that engulfs John. He finds himself lying on a beach recliner. Rowena stands above him with her hand outstretched. She says, “Come on old man time to get up.” Ro leads John across the boardwalk to a tiki hut.
     There she lays him out naked on his back upon a bamboo mat. She whispers to him in a wordless language from before the dawn of speech. She casts her feminine spell by laying her soft hands upon his head to bring him comfort in the hour of his deepest need.
     John feels the flutter of her silken fingers as she grasps his arms. His wren girl anoints his sacred stones in coconut milk. His loins rejoice. The wet kiss of her touch upon his bare skin leaves fingerprints deep within. She embraces his nakedness in a wreath of woman.
     His loins thicken into the density of a bosc pear that forms the shape of his desire. Then his dream girl becomes a miraculous flower where the mystery of life begins. She engulfs him with her thighs wrapped tightly around his hips until her song of life carries across the ocean waves and resonates with the zephyr. Seagulls, otters, and whales all join them in the melody of love.
     The Goddess is love, creation is birth and all life returns in a cycle of death and rebirth. The fragmented pearls of consciousness in the epicenter of his being coalesce into a lotus dream which carries him higher into the nothingness of eternity until there is a flash of prismatic light and he is buried deep within his love for her.