They walked together trail and trees over Ozark mountainside, and in the warm spell sun, his mind returned into a memory that played in thought again.
Willing, resisting drift and distance, he remained within the present.
“Do you ever relive memories that were never more than thought?” he asked. “A story written, or only in mind, made in a season, a spirit, or certain kind of day and when such returns and cycles back, so too does memory that was never more than thought?”
She listened. She mused, merry in the morning sun that shone through Ozark woods still open in winter-bare through warm spell lived leading minds and hopes to spring.
“You write more than I do,” she answered after time. “Returned stories as memories—you have more of those than me—but yes, there are memories I relive, in certain days and ways, when I am returned to a living in the spirit that was never more than mind.”
Face blushed in the sun; soft pale rose of warmth and life expressing over cheeks and connecting bridge of nose that painted undertone to freckles’ there. She was beautiful in the change.
He returned in memory to stories of year before, imaginings of a rural romance idealized in threshold’s pass of double-blue gates that opened to hill and vantage of pasture spread, daffodils in first-spring bloom rising yellow-gold from grass; open lie and love in affection-hold under full of the warm-spell sun.
She was beautiful in the present, more lovely and true than minded memory: bright white of her shirt from under coat, brown and opened in the front, that shone like cherry blossoms in first of forest’s flower; its brightness made the more in wash of the warm spell light that stirred both spirit and earth in restlessness of a ready for life-awaken from wintered waiting.
Seeing—admiring and adoring—within him, warm spell stirred; rising in low and heat-fluttering in center.
Beyond the words, story-memory, of a live that never was: he moved for her in present. He moved for her in warmth and the light and stir of spirit’s wake. He kissed her in forest stand.
He kissed her in the forest stand, tall amongst naked trees. He kissed in warmth and light and pure of gentle—soul-brilliance like warm spell sky. To white of cover of front, his hands rose in hold and cradle of her shape; the warmth of her in heat through white, raised buds of her swells gentle touched in present of pressing through.
He kissed her stronger. Her spirit matched, answered in same-want way.
In forest stand, his hands lowered, fingers and palms to warm of skin beneath and rising from under shirt’s low-end. Raising, he bared her as the woods around. Gentle in affections, she loved the gift of fell: his warmth of tongue, lips and spirit-touch over shape and focus to sense-drawn ends.
Then from stand, slow guiding down, they lain upon the forest floor, on bed of grass from autumn flush in last of season’s warmth when opened to sun again. Winter-dormant, grass lain in mat as bed awaiting fecund of life anew.
Upon the forest floor, upon awaiting bed, he loved her in warm spell heat—intimate, steady, building in oneness into freeing of her spirit spoken in sigh and soft of breath escape—gentle as a wind in song-whisper through the trees.