Up on the Salt Fork

Milton Jordan

April 19, 2022

Yesterday blew by chalky white dusting

every camper’s expectation

of breakfast eggs without too much grit.

Cracking asphalt curved along the Salt Fork,

running deep in its red dirt gravel bed.

Locust trees clung to the hillside below

the ridge protecting the abandoned house.

I wonder, she said, who lived there, 

though she was not asking me,

and left their Massey Ferguson tractor

beside that Ford pickup to rust away.

Did they plan a town and build the road

expecting others like themselves?

But she was still not asking me.

Milton Jordan lives with Anne in Georgetown, Texas. He is editing a volume of selections from the first year of Texas Poetry Assignment. His collection, A Forest for the Trees, is forthcoming from Backroom Window Press.