A Favorite Highway

Milton Jordan

 August 15, 2021

The road that runs from Clarendon to Claude

comes up from the Intracoastal Canal,

tracks the Neches through forests onto prairie

to reach high mesas and steep-walled canyons,

‘til west of the crest of Togwotee Pass

startling basalt peaks appear the French

once exclaimed beyond that wide depression

until it wanders into its fifth state

and leaves the country near Glacier Park,

but in Clarendon and Claude, it’s a small town 

route with empty storefronts, Dollar Stores,

some service stations and coffee shops

where local retirees gather daily

with little thought for their road’s wanderings. 

Milton Jordan lives in Georgetown with the musician Anne Elton Jordan. His most recent poetry collection is What the Rivers Gather, SFASU Press, 2020. Milton edited the anthology, No Season for Silence: Texas Poets and Pandemic, Kallisto Gaia Press, 2020.