Beginning Again

Milton Jordan

December 22, 2021

We still struggle to shore up shattered structures

of lives we once thought overly demanding,

too many tasks with excess expectations

from friends and family and colleagues that seemed

too often to fill cherished spaces

we’d planned to keep empty for ourselves.

Empty has become our way of living

after two years on infection’s edge

and we yearn to use again those habits

of cooperation and community

now atrophied where we set them aside

months ago, expecting a brief lockdown.

Perhaps now we’ll welcome expectations,

tackle every task together and find

cherished spaces in those shattered structures. 

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.