Tabernacle Sunday

Milton Jordan

October 20, 2021

In memory of Milton S. Jordan 

Did you show up on May’s last Sunday

and arrive in time to hear the service

close with singing and the ritual 

benediction you always pronounced?

Maybe you wait now with other men

bringing ice chests and wicker baskets

to the outdoor tabernacle tables

where women will spread cloth and set bowls

and platters filled with food for three such crowds.

Do you still walk, afternoon, among old graves,

and reset stone slabs and toppled monuments?

Do you clear cans and scattered trash Stella’s

grandson left behind his mower Saturday?   

Are the inscriptions all familiar

in that yard where space has long been filled?

Who rings the bell now to call you all

back to tabernacle tables reset

for leftovers and lemonade? 

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.