At Schmidt’s

Milton Jordan

June 4, 2023

Bent slightly over the tin topped table

bordered with half-inch quarter round molding

in the drafty back room at Schmidt’s Seed and Supply

Amberman hacked through another spasm

and looked at the seven dominoes he held.

Ten or twelve others sat this November morning

at Forty-two games or Domino tables.

Twenty years ago these men ran this town

the boards and councils, banks and businesses,

the foundry and sawmill both now shuttered.

Other old men sat at those edged tables

in that store then owned by Schmidt’s two uncles.

Near noon we walked at Amberman’s cane’s pace

toward lunch at Rinehardt’s City Cafe.

You’re older now, boy, than I was when

all this caught up with me in sixty-eight.

He credits twenty-six years of mill dust

for his daily weakening lungs, but quit

a two pack a day habit two years

before leaving that mill foreman’s job.

Dust or smoke makes little difference now;

and we gave neither much thought then, he said,

as I held the same oval glassed, wooden door

and heard the fry cook’s familiar greeting.

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