A Painting for Nicky

I'm at Tule Springs Park sitting next to a spring fed pond at a picnic table. It's a really beautiful day. Let me paint the picture on the canvas of your mind for you.
Most of Vegas is a red dirt landscape with rocks of all sizes replacing the normal green plants you're use to. The dry wind blows through the sage and lavender bushes coloring the breeze with sweet fragrant purple blooms that seem to almost dance to their own unheard music. It's an odd kind of beauty so different from the lush green landscape of Florida. The sky here is so big. It's almost like it stretches from here to eternity and back. Far enough away from the city's center that you can almost forget about the big, garish buildings with their cold steel jutting from all angles out of the ground. Forget about the bright lights and the vomit of neon advertisements that flood the senses. Forget the hookers, the pushers, the feather covered dancers, and the magicians that will make your soul disappear if you let them. Here those harsh scenes give way to beautiful mountains that The Artist of all has lightly dusted with welcoming, almost beckoning, white heaven-like snow. The breeze has a bit of a bite to it. Just a little nibble is taken on your lungs with every breath, just enough to remind you that you here and you are alive. The air here is clean and filled with the scents of cactus blooms, pinon, ripe coconuts, and palm dates. The perfume on the breeze gently whispers stories of some far off Saharan Palace. Where beautiful, dark haired women dance in mesmerizing rhythm, enveloping you in a dazzling spectacle of color and secret forbidden pleasures. There are low grassy knolls that gently roll down to the spring's edge. The hills are reminiscent of the lovely body shape of a very voluptuous woman who has just laid down briefly for some rest and instead was caught in an eternal slumber. With every exhalation of her breath, she gave birth to groves of pine trees that are swollen with their fat, round pine cones issuing forth their thick memories of Christmases gone by scent. Her deep intake of breath draws to this place the water from within our Mother Earth. She fills the ponds with cold, bone chilling, life giving fluidity. Even in the stifling heat of a Las Vegas summer, these waters remain almost glacieral. Right under the calm surface of this sky mirror, there is a fresh water world that is teaming with life. With a well baited hook, one may even catch a fish tale worthy of rivaling Captain Ahab's telling of the quest for the great, white, Moby Dick. The sounds of children laughing, geese honking, and of birds singing create a soothing lullaby that envelopes you in a calm embrace similar to a mother's arms comforting her beloved child. This place, alive with enough alliteration to write a million poems, is where I sit alone. I sit here, all alone, immersed in thoughts and memories of you played for me on the movie reel of my minds eye.