Numbering Those Days
Milton Jordan
September 1, 2022
Once in a lifetime that hides in my memory
like a chapter in an unfinished novel
when my hair hung over my shirt collar,
I gave my shaving mug and brush to the kid
across the street two years before he’d need them
and moved into three rooms behind Chandler’s store
on a back street alongside the freight tracks
with another old boy on a different search.
Four blocks over the Always Open Grill
on Fifth sold monthly breakfast tickets for eggs,
bacon, toast and coffee if you ordered by six.
The city still ran Route Seven out Federal
to the mill and Javier would join me
for the last mile to put in our daily
eight hours on the saws and trimmers.
Milton Jordan lives with Anne in Georgetown, Texas. "Numbering Those Days” is the opening piece in a cycle of poems on their life together.
