DELTA 9: WATER HYACINTH UNDER THE RIGHT CONDITIONS DOUBLES IN SIZE EVERY 10 DAYS

David Koehn


As weather cools, largemouth feed closer to the surface.
Slow down. Take time away from the buttered asterisk.
Do I need to explain that I am watching a golf tournament on T.V.?
My kind die all the time. We laugh. Cry. See the lesson in it.
Work has given me a lego person, and a brick for each year of work.
For well over a decade I have practiced remembering my last drunk.
And what does this have to do with others? Nothing in particular.
Our dog Barky brings me the ball, I ignore him, he throws
His head sideways and the ball rolls under a hedge.
He is a small dog. The ball is blue. The size of a tennis ball.
He brings me the ball. Cause and effect. Not cause and effect.
When John died, I was notified by email.
His son sent a note, knew we knew him well.
I want to end-stop every line because I have never written a poem
Where every line was end-stopped. Damn.
Notah Begay looks good In his light blue oxford.
“Captain Love,” he says, “knows these guys.”
I remember a low punch shot John hit at Poppy Hills,
There was nothing remarkable about the shot.
It was not a poor shot. It was not a great shot.
Remember when slow food was a thing?
What is remarkable is that I remember it.
Is the afterlife nothing but the memories of the living?
That’s all that exists forever until there is no memory of you --
And then there is only everything in everything?
If the dog choking on the cover of the tennis ball
Was a set of tools the flat head screwdriver
Would sing “Hallelujah” as an encore. Enamel on enamel,
The green ewer painted over what was a coffee cup
Holding a broad-leafed fern in mid-foreground sits
Just behind the maroon orbs afloat
In front of where the eye locates the canvas and the image in it.
To see a thing and describe it is difficult enough.
Driving home over Vasco Road today my son said,
“I love you, Dad.” And I responded, as I often do, “I love you more.”
And he said, “Do you? I mean, how do you know?”
Earlier that day I’d driven an hour north to meet a woman I barely knew.
The lot at Skinner Classics had dozens of VW Bus skeletons, all pre-1968.
If there was an app that measured love expressed -- like a sound meter
Showing the pitch and intensity -- the dimensions of it -- if we
Could wear the meter on our wrists -- would I use the word?
When John died my first thought:
If he hadn’t been sober the last 20 years, he’d have been dead already.
In the Scoundrels, “Beijing Honey” there is a line,
“I’m gonna love you until I break your heart”
Threaded between a guitar waggle.
His partner a club-footed expatriate from Columbia
Found him. She described herself as “occasional.” John was not one for disaffection.
Sometimes he just ran out of kindness. Borrowed time, baby,
Borrowed time. According to the Web: bhergh- means "to hide, protect."
Root of borrow, burial; bury; and harbor. John sold recovery
Services, you know, debt relief products. You loved your credit card,
You lost your job -- and now what? Then your phone rang.
The voice on the other end of the call, that was John.
Slow down. He knew the imperfect perfect.
I do not forgive myself. You can not forgive yourself.
Water hyacinth under the right conditions doubles in size every ten days.
The invasive fingers hold leafy pads, appear calm, indifferent,
And the shine of their bright lavender flowers want
For presentation. Note the clean-cut stems in the opal vase.
All night, in a Phoenix hotel, the bar was open.
If I said I drank 15 martinis, maybe more,
Only 16 million of you would believe me.



David Koehn's first full-length manuscript, Twine, now available from Bauhan Publishing, won the 2013 May Sarton Poetry Prize. David just released Compendium (Omnidawn Publishing 2017), a collection of Donald Justice's notes on prosody. David's second full-length collection, Scatterplot, is due out from Omnidawn Publishing in 2020.