It is summer, hot and horny. We are surrounded, immersed, inundated by brilliantly bright light, pervasively palpable heat; pure and potent solar intensity — the very nerve and verve of life itself. We bask and steep in the positive, primal power of the sun, as well as our own. The passionate strength of the life force surges in our cells, flooding all of our senses with waves of lascivious longing and naked desire. We open ourselves to the experience, the energy, the ecstasy.

The steady heat of Summer helps to relax our muscles, making our bodies more fluid and flexible. Our overactive brains and busy minds, too, give way to the seductive power of the season of the sun. The constant stress of our hectic lives boils away and our worries and tightly held tensions completely dissolve, evaporate in the relentless fire of the cosmic cooker. We are limp and loose as spaghetti. All we want to do is lay about, revel and laze in the warm embrace of long, slow days and balmy nights.

Our inhibitions melt, leaving us steaming with all manner of desire. We are overcome with the pure, unadulterated pleasure and appreciation of our own enhanced sensuality. We feel as hot as the sun, salty as the sea, sticky sweet as nectar on an inviting flower. We are as fluttery as bees, pulsating, vibrating with an intensely felt urge to merge, an unapologetic sexual verve. Our passion becomes our purpose. The heat fuels our lust and creates in us a fervor for life and living. We are at one with the world. And all is well.

If the seasons of the year were a plant, the summer would be the flowers — lovely, lush and vaguely lewd. Fully realized blossoms — blatant and blowzy, lavishly colored and shamelessly, intoxicatingly scented like the blooming sexual organs that they are.

Like the sun and the sap, the libido also rises in summer. Out of its basket it surges, the charmed and sinuous serpentine call of the wild. No sissy spring fever, this. But full‑fledged, full‑bodied, full-of-pluck, magenta plush lust. Robust and randy. Raring, willing and completely able. The season pounding in our pulse, people, like flowers, are now quite perfectly primed. Vigorous, vital, and vivacious, we are fragrant and perfect and ready to pick.

If the sun is at its zenith in the sky, so, too, is nature here on Earth at the summit of its sumptuousness, the height of fertile power of the sun and the fecundity of the plants and animals that feed us. “As above, so below,” so the Talmud tells us. The sap has risen. The plants are in their prime. First fruits and flowers, grasses and game offer themselves for the taking. Trees are resplendent in their rich garments of verdure. The landscape is lush with life.

Next week PART 2…

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Donna Henes is the author of The Queen of My Self: Stepping into Sovereignty in Midlife. She offers counseling and upbeat, practical and ceremonial guidance for individual women and groups who want to enjoy the fruits of an enriching, influential, purposeful, passionate, and powerful maturity. Consult the MIDLIFE MIDWIFE™

The Queen welcomes questions concerning all issues of interest to women in their mature years. Send your inquiries to thequeenofmyself@aol.com.