Letter from a Homesick Cousin

Milton Jordan

January 1, 2023

Yours of the 16th (November) arrived 

yesterday, eight weeks on from its postmark -

Overseas letters seem always delayed, here -

You sent this new address, but no reason

for y’all’s move back beyond the Balcones.

Is your Route 2 address near Doc’s old place,

maybe, or some miles away, crowded

with neighbors on both sides, if towns out there

grow as quickly as elsewhere in Texas? 

Or, is the country still as empty now 

as when we all went for summer visits?

Are folks still raising cattle and goats

near that stream tumbling over small boulders

murmuring across the scree in the shallows

to drop pebbles smoothed by their journey

before reaching the Sabinal above the park?

If you find a few blue-green, stream-smoothed stones 

like those Doc used to give us to take home

every year, please send them to remind us

what it’s like to be in Texas listening

to country music from Amarillo and Abilene. 

John wanders the house humming that chorus

from Gary P. Nunn’s tune, but the three year

contract we signed schedules only one break,

just three weeks, still eleven months away.

Pardon my lengthy meanders, 

but as Shaw - I think it was Shaw - said 

‘If I’d had more time I’d have been briefer.’

Milton Jordan lives with Anne in Georgetown, Texas. His most recent poetry collection is A Forest for the Trees from Backroom Window Press, 2022.