Message in a Bottle

I make my way to Canal Street where a warm and dry bus waits to whisk me to Lake Pontchartrain 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 in her dress to take her seat with her song fading into the transmigration of souls. The Elysian Fields bus whisks us away with my last fare gone to the lady whose song takes me for an enchanting ride.

The singing girl disembarks and I follow her hoping she doesn't think I'm stalking her. I emerge from the protective bubble of the bus into the sultry air. I walk briskly down the levee by Lake Pontchartrain where I see the singing woman lying in the grass by the water. 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 lake 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 elephant ear plants which line her little patch of grass.

She looks up at a flock of pelicans flying in formation. 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 palm of her hand over the blades of grass and feel like joining her. Like her, my body is never more stimulated than when touched by the sun or rain in a quiet place under the sky. 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 up at the piney treetops.

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 clings to her body. I begin to shiver. She gets up and walks through the light rain toward the seawall.

She is rare as the pink dolphin, but a miracle of nature rather than a freak thereof. The New Orleanian afternoon is dipped in a tangerine sun with the grassy park a pleasure garden where lasses and lads languorously lie.

My mystery maiden has me in tow as I traverse the road with my emerald eyes attuned to her feminine beauty. My chanteuse's vocalize hovers notes like a cloud of hummingbirds for her tonal aura. Her treble clefs take flight like a kaleidoscope of butterflies.

My mad ballerina mimes metered minuets. My mind is unhinged at the slightest pretext of premonition. She rhymes her high notes with her precocious prances and promenades like a tantalizing tanned gymnast flexing her flowery feminine fancies. She blossoms her pink posies in damsel dreams whose poetics are too distant from my plain-spoken words, yet ever overarching me with amorous entreaties.

There before me, my lyrical lass wades into the waves. An object bobs in the surf and she is up to her breasts in pursuit of it. The glass sparkles in the sun as she lifts it in her hands. She climbs the concrete steps of the seawall holding a mostly empty wine bottle. Her dress is soaked and sticks to her skin.

She pops the cork and shakes a roll of paper out. Her lips part and she speaks in sentences strung together in conversation instead of a song.

She reads from the note she rescued from the bottle. "The man with the birthmark on his family jewels is the one who will treat you like a lady. He is the one to marry."

She proceeds to the matter at hand. "Drop them," she says.

"Oh come on, there will be plenty of opportunities to confirm that."

She says, "Seeing is believing and I want proof before we take the plunge."

"Let's cross the levee to the campus first. There is less chance of getting busted there."

She says, "You must be telling the truth or you wouldn't agree to this. Now, let's do this bizarre form of lie detecting."

I say, "Even more certain than a polygraph."

She says, "There is plenty of field between us and the student union. The most anyone would see is a spot of skin from that distance." My modesty is abandoned in a moment of truth.

"Oh, my God" she exclaims.

"Does it look ugly?"

"It looks like the coat of arms for my knight. There are people approaching but they are still far away. Let me behold your heraldry."

I say, "You turned my blemish into a beauty mark with your kindness."

"When you're used to being lied to honesty must come as a surprise."