Yes, Jose,
this is another love letter
from anthroprivileged me
to LeftBrain dominant you
for multicultural us.

I’m still here
sinking into my deep blue camp chair
with feet resting on a weathered
wooden platform
for my monastic tent

Now folded
and masterfully squeezed into its storage bag
like a fat green sausage
with a thick
black fly zipper,
secure,
awaiting it’s next orgasmic coming out
to camp and play.

And you,
warm and glistening
listening you,
are still driving
west toward this transition
Saturday’s bittersweet sunset.

Perhaps already lonely
thinking
of what
and feeling whom
lies ahead
while all else feels left behind

Another week of adventure lost;
another week of memories gained

Yet memories have grown cacophonous
while adventures in knowing
new frontiers
grow old as shrinking Earth
grown bodies

Fading hope to feel
taste
see
hear
smell
touch abundantly enough
for this full life
experiencing love
quenched time

Comparing future now to back there then,
wishing we could have us all
warm and pleasant
in our head,
heart,
bed of intimacy
without embarrassing
premature limits,
boundary issues,
health precautions.

You tried to apologize
for not asking more
about my wounded kids

And I did not think to apologize,
but wonder, now, that I didn’t,
for not asking how you are feeling
and dealing
post prostate cancer

Remissions
feel like uncertain transitions,
undemanding admissions
both healthy opportunities
and diseased risks
lie beyond this day’s journey
toward Albany.

Perhaps you,
like me,
fear
and already feel
loss of intimacy
imagined
yet not touched,
thought
but not appreciably,
healthy needed
but not safely found,
sacred bound
for joy’s immense integrity.

When I walked into our group’s enclosed porch
this past Sunday
for my first check-in circle,
your first facilitation,
I thought of my former boss.

You look and sound
like Bishop Tafoya,
when he was your age
and I was half your age.

I had trouble
shaking this sage off.

It helps
that you sing
with warmth and passion
in fulsome baritone,
as the good Bishop
decidedly did not.

Nor could I imagine him
dancing with a white scarved fan
with integrity
flirtatious machismo
joyfulness
deeply resounding playfulness.

Do you have a type?
I wonder
Are you familiar with mine?

Those romantic,
erupting into erotic,
miracles of preference
we cannot control
or calm our appetites
to accept
AND appreciate,
anticipate
those with us
here and there
in and out of Gayla 44,
after and before
now heading west
away from east.

So much to hide,
to learn,
to unveil,
to set aside
for graceful aging,
and to warmly embrace
for compassioned wisdom
felt together,
rather than silently,
less sacredly,
apart.

The Center’s lunch bell rang
and now has gone

Absorbed by quiet shushing
and rustling
high in evergreens
baking in Mama’s summertime
weekend of commerce
and less commercial passions,
traffic rituals,

Pre-empting ancient natural liturgies
of sea,
flowing water
and strong mountains
inspiring bonfires
bond-fire between rising
and falling phoenix
conjoining
co-investing
multi-generational passions;
daddies and sons,
masters and slaves,
tops and bottoms,
poles and holes,
straights and rounds,
dipolar co-arising

Riding forward home
to what continues repurposing why,
reworking hidden meaning
as yet unredeemed
in sensory Business As Usual

Backward east
returning promises
of safe and healthy
bright happy new dawns
transcending broken hearts,
troubled mind’s
loss of time’s
most cherished values

Love’s integral compassions
resting first
returning last

Already
I miss you
ready to miss us.