Deep East Texas

Milton Jordan

July 9, 2023

You might leave Uncertain one morning, sun 

rising early over Caddo, glistening 

off gray moss hanging damp from cypress

along the lake, pass through stands of white pine

cones fallen on blankets of browning needles

before reaching a pocket prairie, 

its new grass waving in a fresh breeze.

Pick up 87 through the Sabine Forest

with smaller slash pine, black gum and ash;

drop through remnants of the Big Thicket

dense with undergrowth and stunted palmetto 

below the limbs of towering loblollies

and like Arctic Circle locals with seven sounds

for snow, you’ll need myriad ways to say green.  

Milton Jordan lives with Anne in Georgetown, Texas. He co-edited the first Texas Poetry Assignment anthology, Lone Star Poetry, Kallisto Gaia Press, 2022.