Dear John,

All day
yesterday
I loaded up with a cascading river
of mixed anxiety and anticipation
about what to safely and kindly,
transparently and vulnerably
compassionately, so non-violently, share
communicate;

Which narrative tributaries to choose
within this vast spacetime stream
of choices
directions
felt depressions and erections.

Do you remember
communication theory
framed as Rhetorical Events?

Our initial walk and talk,
eating together,
rather than my refrigerator foraging
brunchtime usual rawfood practice,
is a graced green,
rain giving way to blue, memory for me,
and, I hope, for we
these sacred walking
secular talking
people.

Successful rhetorical events,
as I recall,
and have co-passionately experienced
with ecstatic thrills
and mysterious chills of anticipation,
wanting more and more
cascading throughout my too isolated life,

Are cooperatively held spaces
resonant and verbal and non-verbal places
longing to become resilient
as ultra-violet light
in phosphorescent mystical night,
bright
and warm
without ballistic fright,
inviting sounds of sight.

So I drove home
basking in such rich
potentially resilient
transparent and vulnerable
articulate yet impassioned
felt experience
confirming all my own ego’s grand theories
about win/win non-violent
Rhetorical compassioning
Events.

My anxieties spoke later
about mutual physical
natural, yet also spiritual,
attraction–
this smell and taste neurological chemistry
of touch exhaling
to co-empathically predict
our romantically felt quality
inhaling integrity’s great resilient passions,
shared loves
communal,
deeply green cooperative,
that rhetorical day
as true and beautiful for us.

It has been thirty years
since my last first date,
with a man who became my unanticipated husband,
partner
spouse
lover
quarreler
critic
listener
emotive voice
co-investor
political ally
communicator
miscommunicator
long-term rhetorical event
cooperative space-holder,
mediator
not really quite green enough
for resonant felt
and thought co-passionate experience
near our end
of cohabitation.

Nearly half my lifetime,
thirty years,
and I feel anxious
I have not yet learned
appropriate new old person rules
of transparency
and vulnerability
to be clear
and kind,
compassionately clear
about my natural/spiritual
physical/metaphysical attractions,
anticipations,
anxieties.

When I last dated
a gay encounter of the first kind
either ended nakedly together
or with a scheduled second date
with a bed
or a sling
or a deserted moonlit beach
front and center on our anticipated menu

Or ended in disaster,
no connection,
no further warm and resonant communication,
no passing green light Go!

I did not “date”
men who lived so very far away,
out of state,
unless one of us was planning to relocate
or both of us were anticipating
an extremely resonant
one hot night stand
lying down together,
exploring all the vertical
and horizontal dances
we could imagine ever wishing we had done
to further gather
future’s warm anticipations.

I am anxious
because I do not want to disappoint you
or me
about our embodied
non-verbal communication
and passion together.

My own nakedness
lies nowhere near my vulnerable
and transparent self-esteem
as was the case
when I last dated
and I do not know
what to do
and not do
with that.

I have no mentors,
no wise teachers,
no therapeutic facilitators,
no sex therapist
to talk and touch me through
this anxiety.

But, I do anticipate
an unfortunate comparison
I met on our silvered dating site
the same day I first heard you
connect climate pathological effects
with capitalistic causes,
which immediately won my curiosity
to know
just how deeply knowing
we might go
together,
and not apart.

I met another singer
another meditator
another deeply
physically connected
to Taoist sensory communication
yangly verbal and yin non-verbal,

More physically incarnated
and less metaphysically abstract
less theoretical
merely rhetorical
more mature
aged
connected like wine with cheese
and re-connected
than my own experience
in how to mutually
yet maturely
please.

Last evening we talked.
His voice sings and rings,
warmly chills and quietly thrills.

And, he is closer.
Teaches dance.
We anticipate learning together
how to tango horizontally
without creating an entangled mess
at our ripe old average age
of 69

Which,
when I last dated
was a cooperatively rhetorical
erotic position
and not an age
which we sensually anticipated
without great anxiety
about resilience
of sensual resonance.

For me,
this need not be a win or lose,
either-or situation.
Even less so
if I thought the two of you
would appreciate each other
in this partner searching
lifeline rivered
shivered way,
but that is not what I would anticipate
either of you would say.

So, that is what is on my mind
and heart
and root chakras
this another deep green
ego-centering
and ecosystemic rhetorical day.

Said my vertical horizontal way,
physical and metaphysical
natural and spiritual
secular and sacred
love with you
and hell to pay,
anxiously anticipating
your kind
non-maligned
response.