Over Coffee

For Jeremy Monroe, in memoriam

 

I’ll have another cup of coffee please

and one for the debonair man

whose words are wisps of steam

hovering above my cup; whose words

are tiny cohetes, tightly packed with long

experience and deep knowing, bursting

over the Ajijic plaza; whose words are 

rocketing from Mexican Train to Bolaño

to Vivaldi to remembered icy winds

crossing Lake Michigan.

I’ll have another cup of coffee please

and time enough under the sun to learn

his laughing memories of 25-cent

double features on long-ago Saturdays

at the Belmont Theater; to learn about

a nineteenth century sage forever

sharing living space in the family home 

in Lakeview; to learn about the gulf between

the study and the practice; to learn the secrets

of his latest story and poem.

I’d like another cup of coffee please

and time enough for new words over coffee

and beneath a mariachi moon.

–Kenneth Salzmann

 

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