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
For more information about Lake Chapala visit: www.chapala.com
